Stronger Than Vengeance
by Sparkflight206
Summary: The Spirit of Vengeance never leaves survivors, only those who will die later escape. So when it finds a girl who fights for life yet begs for death, it shows a new side to itself. Mercy. Confused, Robbie Reyes tries to find out why. Why spare this one person? Meanwhile Daisy Johnson attempts to understand the devil's bounty hunter, and why he rides in the name of vengeance.
1. The Devil Inside

Taking up a nearby piece of rebar, Robbie gripped it like a sword and set it ablaze. "So you've got the devil inside you too."

"What are you talking about?" Daisy asked him, her face contorted with confusion.

He didn't answer, just swung at her with the burning pole of metal. She ducked beneath it and sent him tumbling with a vibration blast, screaming silently at the pain in her weakening bones. Standing up fully, she spoke down to him as he rolled to his feet slowly.

"Are we seriously going to do this? I just wanted to talk."

He shot up like lightning and they traded many blows before she pinned him to a frame. He looked her dead in the eyes. "You shouldn't have gotten involved."

"Serial killers always complain when you try to intervene." Daisy retorted.

"I only kill _asesinos_ who deserve it. It's vengeance _chica_."

"For what? You killed a detective!" She spat.

The leather jacket wearing young man shrugged. "He had blood on his hands."

She struck him across the face with her free hand, balled into a fist. The blow split his skin, leaving a gash in his cheek that was pretty nasty as those cause by a punch went.

"A school teacher!"

Surging forward, he repelled her vibrational hold on him and retorted himself. "A pedophile!"

"You don't get to decide who lives or dies." She told him sternly as she sent him tumbling again, turning to face him once more.

Robbie got to his feet slowly, his expression turning far more solemn as he replied.

"I'm not the one who decides."

With that, he called on the evil inside him, burning his flesh off excruciatingly as his skeleton caught alight with the fire of the devil. His glowing orange eyes told her what he couldn't say as the Rider took over.

 _The devil does._

Tearing the bumper off a car, the Ghost Rider set it aflame and swung it, only to have it repelled by a vibrational blast. As it advanced, it noted the pain the use of her powers caused the young woman. She wouldn't carry on resistance much longer even if she didn't know it, because she was as weak as a puppy to the bounty hunter of the devil.

Her next blast struck its chest, but did nothing as the avatar of the Spirit of Vengeance strode towards her. Careful not to use too much force, the Rider hooked its leg behind hers and pushed her by the collarbone. She fell.

She hit the dirt, or she would've if it hadn't caught her by her top. With a gentleness that contradicted its hellish appearance, it lowered her to the ground.

There was an unspoken message in its behaviour, one she barely caught.

 _Stop, before you hurt yourself any more._

Daisy decided to hell with it, and blasted the flaming skeleton again, this time with both hands. It flew, but landed on its feet with ease. Rising, she charged it and lashed out with a kick to its side.

Effortlessly, the Rider caught her leg and pushed her by the collarbone again, but this time harder. She flew a short distance and her back met the unforgiving ground. It grabbed the heavy shelf that was next to her and dropped it on her. Instinctively, she stopped it with vibrations from her hands, barely holding it off herself.

The Ghost Rider crouched beside her, regarding her curiously. She gasped out five words.

"Do it. I deserve it."

It did nothing, just watched her. When exhaustion hit her moments later, her powers stopped. It caught the shelf and held it up with one hand. The other grasped her collar.

Rising to its feet, the Rider pulled her clear, then dropped the shelf. It crashed to the ground where she would've been if it wasn't holding her up by the collars of both her jacket and top. It dropped her, then walked away into the darkness, leaving her lying fully conscious on the ground. She'd recover enough energy to move later, but for now she was motionless.

Once out of sight, the Ghost Rider walked to the Hell Charger and started the engine. It had spared her, because she was innocent, but it would keep an eye on her if she turned up again. This woman unsettled the Rider. Her soul was pure yet she begged for death.


	2. Mercy

Robbie looked up to see the same van that had been outside his workplace for three days straight now. In this neighbourhood, any vehicle outside one place for every a day was bad news. But the fact it was here, not long after he'd transformed in front of that _chica_ with the strange vibration powers that he assumed were from the devil, like his own, was setting off proverbial warning bells of all kinds in his head.

Taking a crowbar, he quietly made his way around to the driver's side and opened the door quickly, the makeshift weapon at the ready. There was no one in it. Even more bells going off now.

He made his way back to the shop, and was going over to take a seat and think it over when he heard a familiar voice. One he'd heard not even a week ago.

"Robbie Reyes."

No doubt about it.

He turned to see the same _chica_ in the same clothes with a mug in her hands. She had a grin on her face that was almost threatening yet sweet and innocent. One that really did not sit well with him.

"Hi." He started simply.

The girl gestured to his co-worker as she spoke next. "I was just telling Canelo here how tight we used to be back at Garfield High."

"Sorry, I can't quite place you." He played evasive. "So many faces, you know?"

"Daisy. I'm Daisy Johnson, the girl with the black beanie? Regular rebel, obeyed no rules, ran away not long after you left in the eleventh grade? Ringing any bells Rob?"

"Ah, yeah I remember you now." He played along, so that he could get this girl away from Canelo. But if she wanted to play mind games with him, he'd play too. "You fought so much at school, almost like you had a death wish."

She moved closer, taking a sip from her cup. "Oh yeah. You kept telling me not to go starting them on our dates and at school, everywhere.

"Last fight I remember was the one with you. You know, the one where I was mad because you drove off one night, and we broke up when things heated up not too long after that. Well I've felt bad for when I hit you because of the way you let that other guy push you around since then. If I remember right, I gave you a gash… right here."

She traced where she'd broken his skin in their fight with a finger. It was a light, gentle touch that sparked up phantom pain from the unmarred flesh of his cheek. He still felt that wound despite it being healed when he reverted to his human body. It was almost like she was teasing him, pushing him.

Canelo caught his attention with a wave and asked him, "This girl used to be _tu novia_ Robbie?"

"Yeah. We dated back in the eleventh grade, she was the last girlfriend I had. I've stuck to cars since." He replied with a deliberate smile, forcing himself to put his arm around her shoulders.

He turned his head to face Daisy, and found her with that same sweet, too -good-to-be-true smile, leaning her head against shoulder. She really was trying to push his limits. Just how much did she know about him? It was really unsettling that she was alluding to their battle in the junkyard as a breakup fight.

"So… why'd you pop in?" He asked.

"Well yesterday I was having trouble with my van and it literally went up in flames. I remembered you loved cars ever since you got to ride shotgun in your uncle Eli's Charger, and I heard you'd become a mechanic so I thought I'd stop by, reconnect given we last saw each other at a bit of a bad time in our lives."

She was really doing his restraint in. The Spirit of Vengeance inside him was indifferent to her, so she wasn't deserving of punishment. But, she was dangerous, having both knowledge and powers to contest his own.

"Sure." He consented after a pause. "I'll take a look."

"Great! Come on Rob!" She replied in a very chirpy tone. She grabbed his hand and pulled him out front, half skipping.

He got the van into the garage, which took a while, then set about looking to see if anything was actually wrong with it. As he did, Daisy continued to push and prod him with tidbits of information about himself that she'd apparently found out.

"You really think it was a good idea, us being in a room together again?" He asked her honestly. "I mean, with what happened last time we were together and all."

"Well given you were gentle despite the fight up until I cut your cheek and you ran off, yeah." She replied.

She said these things knowing Canelo could still hear her. He was the other side of the garage, and could heard some things she said if they were slightly louder than normal speaking volume. This whole deal was really grating on his nerves, and the fact the demon in him only seemed _curious_ about her as far as he could tell was unnerving.

The moment Canelo told him he wanted him to lock up given he was taking a car back to its owner, then left, he dropped the charade. "What do you want with me girl?"

"What I wanna know is why. Why kill those people, even though the kills I've looked into check out?" She asked him plainly, stopping her happy go lucky act.

"Because they deserved punishment for what they did. Sure, death might be a little extreme in some cases, but they committed bad enough sins that the other guy thought they deserved to die. The level of brutality is the scale of what they did." He told her firmly. "He's the one who decides, and carries out vengeance. I'm just a passenger at best."

"Dissociative identity because of your power, that's a new one." She commented, almost to herself. "Never met one like us who had that."

"One like us?" Robbie questioned.

"Inhumans."

He shook his head. "That's not what I am."

"Look. I know the whole life changing when you got stuck in a cocoon for a bit during terrigenesis was scary, I still have claustrophobia from that, but it doesn't mean it's that bad. You have an amazing gift, although yeah you looked scary when you use it. Don't waste it."

He stared her dead in the eyes. "I was never in any cocoon, I got my powers when I prayed for vengeance . Seriously girl, if you're trying to save my soul, don't bother, I already sold it."

"To the devil?" She guessed, a bit incredulously.

"He was the only one buying, you know?"

The solemn tone of his voice seemed to wipe away the doubt in her that he'd made a deal with the devil. So, she was an Inhuman, she'd pretty much just told him that.

"What'd you get in return? What did the devil promise you other than revenge?"

"Something to fight for." He replied. "Why do you care so much?"

"Because those guys you killed the first time I saw you were associated a group called the Watchdogs, and they hunt Inhumans like me. I wanted to interrogate them, find out something that would help me take them down." She confessed.

"You against the world, huh Quake?"

"Yeah. Wait, what did you just call me?"

He repeated himself. "Quake, that what they call you right? Because you can cause vibrations that rumble the ground?"

"How'd you guess?" She asked with a sigh.

"When you pinned me, I felt my entire skeleton vibrating."

"You mean, the skeleton you can set on fire and use to go all William Tell on people who have blood on their hands?" Daisy inquired.

"Yeah that skeleton." He acknowledged. "Why? Got a problem with that? Even if you do something about it, I've got nothing to lose."

"Well, there's your decent job here, your legal freedom, civilian identity. Not to mention Gabe. I'm pretty sure he'd be pretty upset to lose his brother." She listed.

This _chica_ had stepped over the line, and that line was Gabe, his little brother. He took a wrench from the box of tools and set it ablaze. The same resigned look took over the brown eyes of the girl as she back away. His eyes seemed to have fire in them for a moment when he spoke angrily.

"You should've left my brother out of this."

"Robbie, it doesn't have to go this way. We can talk this out." She tried.

He advanced. "No, this is how it _has_ to be."

Using her powers, she dropped the lifted car from the ceiling. He jumped back as it fell, avoiding it landing on him. In doing so, he dropped the wrench.

Instead of the wrench, he pulled off the free exhaust of the fallen car and set it on fire like he had the wrench. She next sent the waist height tool cabinet at him, but he sidestepped it and swung. The first attempt missed, but his second swing struck her left forearm, causing her immense pain as she fell down.

Before she could recover, he knocked her out with a clean cross to the face. It wouldn't leave a mark.

Crouching down, he examined her arm critically. It was fractured, but her arm bones were unnaturally brittle. That was why the single hit had fractured her arm and not just bruised it. Her powers could be the cause given she primarily used them from her arms.

He picked her up and took her to the small office, putting her on a chair. He didn't tie her up, it would only make her arm worse than it was. Then he put the shop back to how it was before the fight. After that, he opened her van and checked out the inside properly.

Grabbing her stuff, he cleared a space on the desk and set it down, mere moments after she raised her head. An apology couldn't do any harm.

"I hope I didn't hit you too hard. Your arm is fractured, not broken, I've seen a lot of breaks so I know it isn't."

"Well that's spectacular." She groaned.

He commented as he sifted through the contents of her van.

"Your bones are unnaturally weak. Why is that?"

"My powers. My body can only take so much vibration before my bones start getting damaged. I guess using then so much recently did my arms in."

He found a bottle of pill that were labelled to aid with bone healing. Walking over to her, he held them in her field of vision.

"How many of these do you need to recover from this kind of injury?" He asked.

"I take two before I go out ready to use my powers, so probably three every 6 hours is my safest bet if I don't want to overdose on them. I'm not sure, I've never had to deal with it this bad before."

Robbie checked the time as he got three of the pills out of the bottle and put them in her uninjured hand. It was so he'd know when it'd be safe to give her more since he seemed to be keeping her around so she couldn't do any damage. Plus, he _did_ fracture her arm, it was only right he take care of her.

"Why are you even keeping me alive?"

The question threw him. Putting down her stuff, he turned to face her. She looked far more vulnerable now, cradling her fractured arm, that weary look in her eyes.

"The night we fought, the other guy looked into your soul and found you to be innocent of any crime of any sort that warranted him even hurting you. For the first time ever, he fought to subdue instead of kill. He had mercy on you, he's never ever even given a hint of anything but vengeance.

"I get the memories of what he does as it happens. Thing is, for some reason he blocked me out that night, shut me off after he got you on the ground the second time. I don't know what happened."

"So you want to know what happened?" She asked.

He glanced down at her arm then back up at her face. "No, I want to find out why he spared you. Thing is, the demon inside me's be quiet since he left you there."

Finding a file that looked like something resembling a case file from a detective's work, he opened it. It was about the guys she'd been after that he'd killed. The Aryan Brotherhood, they stole things for money, being pretty much a hit crew for hire. So far, she'd been pretty thorough with how she dealt with them.

"What was your plan for when you got one of the guys I killed?"

"Interrogate him, find out what he was doing, who for, the works. Why did you kill them?"

"They spilled innocent blood." He told her.

Daisy whistled. "Wow, take yourself seriously much?"

He stopped reading the file and looked at her with a serious expression. "Look Daisy, if that's your name. When I made the deal with the devil, and I begged for vengeance in return for the loss of my soul, I swore to hunt down those who spilled innocent blood, who committed wrongs against people who'd never intentionally done anything to hurt them in their lives. That was the deal I made, my soul and my service for my vengeance."

He took a breath. "Why'd you get curious about them?"

"They were working with the Chinese, which is practically unthinkable if you know their agendas, and they were outfitted with RPG's, as you found out when they shot one at your car." She put it plainly. "You're not interesting in how these things are connected?

"Look, I know that you've got your own crusade and the big picture is kinda lost on you but someone is arming them, uniting them and that should bother both of us. Plus, I still haven't found out what they stole from the energy lab in Pasadena."

"What lab?" He interrupted.

"Momentum Alternative Energy Lab, but its been shut down for years."

He knew that name well. He threw the papers back into the box he got them from and grabbed his jacket from the wall. He'd changed mostly when she'd been unconscious. He threw the black leather on, zipping it up and pulling on his gloves.

"Does that name mean something to you?" Daisy asked, getting up.

"Yeah, trouble." He replied, beckoning her with his hand as he strode out. "Come on. You may have sat there nicely but I don't trust you out of my sight."

" _Charming._ " He heard her mumble.

Unlocking the Hell Charger, Robbie jumped straight into the driver's seat, barely waiting for Daisy to be in with the door closed until he sped off. Knowing they had to go fast, he put the Rider's power into the car and it shot like a bat out of hell along the roads. His eyes were fiery with the amount he was pouring into the vehicle.

He traced the route he'd heard his uncle recite so many times when talking to him and Gabe about his job there. Within what seemed to be a blur of time, they were there and he was kicking in the door with his enhanced strength.

Daisy was barely able to keep up as he raced through the building. He could sense a malicious presence in the reactor room. Breaking into the room, he found one man, a large dark skinned and bald guy in the reactor chamber, and another against the wall with nowhere to run from what seemed to be a ghost that reeked of malice. He caught the spectre by the arm and pulled it away from the man against the wall.

It was a ghostly man, and he seemed shocked that he could be touched. Robbie seized the seeming ghost by the throat and let his eyes blaze.

" _What are you?_ " It demanded fearfully.

With a cry of agony, he let out the Spirit of Vengeance and became the Ghost Rider once more. He faintly hear the formerly trapped man agree with the question across the gap between him and the Spirit.

"Yeah, what are you?"

"Fitz, get me out of here!" The bald man yelled from the chamber. The other man moved around and tried to open the valve lock but to no avail.

"Ah, it's stuck!"

"I really wish our roles were reverse right now." The tall man griped.

The Ghost Rider lit a flame in its gloved hand as Daisy finally found the reactor room. She called out to this 'Fitz', and opened the chamber door with her quake powers, freeing the trapped man inside.

It then thrust the flame upon the malicious spectre, burning it into nothingness. The reactor was shut down by the man called Fitz. Stalking over to the board in the corner, the Rider spied and grabbed a picture that contained the team that Robbie's uncle had worked with here, including the one it had just burned. It stowed the picture in its pocket and approached Daisy.

Without missing a beat, it bent down and slung her over its shoulder, locking its arm around her legs and standing up. It then strode out the door, slamming it in the face of the large man who attempted to follow it, stunning him.

Stalking through the corridors, it made it back into the sunlight and made straight for the Hell Charger.

* * *

Fitz and Mack burst out the doors of Momentum Lab to find the man-turned-burning-skeleton having just deposited Daisy in the passenger seat of his car.

"Hey Matchstick, let her go!" Mack yelled.

The demonic figure glanced up at him and shut the door of the passenger side. He then strode round to the driver's side and got in despite them running straight at him with guns raised. Before they could even touch the car, the engine in the hood and wheels set ablaze and it pulled away. The pair were unable to make out the license plate.

"This does not bode well." Fitz realised. He immediately called Coulson as he put his gun away, and the former director answered almost as soon as it rang.

" _Fitz, what's going on?_ "

"Daisy's resurfaced, and she's been kidnapped."

* * *

"So what now?" Daisy asked as Robbie's flesh reformed over his skeleton in the car whilst he drove, the car reverting too.

The host of the Spirit of Vengeance kept his eyes on the road but for when he checked the rearview mirror to see if they were being pursued. "You wanted to know what was connecting these things, what was the common link?"

"Yeah."

He pulled to a stop and looked to her. "I think it might be me, or at least something to do with me."

"Where to next then?" She asked tiredly, gingerly holding her fractured left arm.

"First I'm taking you to the hospital to get that arm sorted, then… who knows, but I know one this for sure about what we're going to do about this." Robbie put his hand carefully on her shoulder so not to aggravate her arm.

Daisy met his gaze. "What's that?"

"We're not doing this separately anymore. I hurt you, it's my responsibility to at least make sure you heal from the pain I caused."

"And you thought penance was my thing."


	3. Guardian

"You know, considering you were hit by a bat and your bones are still fragile from what I assume is a previous accident, you're very lucky your arm was only fractured. The bone could've splintered with that kind of impact."

Daisy rolled her eyes at the doctor as the cast set around her fractured arm. "Don't I know it, it's like I have some kind of guardian watching over me."

"Well if you do have a guardian angel, they might want to up the effort they put in." The doctor joked.

It didn't take much longer to finish the cast, and Robbie stepped out to take care of the bill for the medical service. Daisy pulled her nylon pullover back on, keeping the sleeve rolled up to keep it out of the way of the cast. She'd already been told the rules of having the cast, not that she didn't know them already because of her S.H.I.E.L.D training. The doctor finished the procedures then.

"Is that young man your boyfriend?"

The random question caught her off guard. "No, it's not like that. He just… really worries about me for some reason."

"Well, he's a fine person, bringing you here. Watch out for him, there aren't many people like him in this area." The doctor remarked. "You're ready to go, just get an appointment in six weeks."

"I get the feeling he won't let me." Daisy commented. She was just about to walk out the door when she turned to face the doctor.

"He's definitely one of a kind."

Exiting the room, she joined Robbie and they left the hospital. With her arm dealt with, they could get to dealing with their ghost problems.

She looked at him as they walked. "You know, you didn't have to pay the bill, I'm not broke."

"Sue me." He replied, getting in the Charger and starting it. She gave him a bewildered look as she ducked her head into the vehicle, holding her newly casted arm aloft so she wouldn't bang it on anything.

"Can you sue a guy who goes carrot top and is pretty much the Grim Reaper? I don't think I can just walk up to the devil and say 'Hey Satan, your boy owes me two and an half grand, I wanna cash it in'. Where would I even go to do that? Hell? Plus, I don't think there are exactly taxis to Hell unless you're the guy who does that too."

Robbie looked at her. "Does my car look like a taxi?"

"No, it looks like it came straight out of Hot Wheels and got a serious upgrade." Daisy stated, expressing her opinion.

As he drove, she tried to talk to him, but he chose to be mostly silent this time around. Every attempt at small talk, he blanked her. Any question, he gave a short answer. Eventually she sighed.

"You do know you're actually gonna have to fill me in if we're gonna be doing anything together."

"Believe me, I'm aware." He replied.

"You mind if I turn on the radio?"

"If you want."

She turned it on, and switched it to the news station after a bit of tuning.

" _... a suspect still at large. We now have two confirmed blackouts; Miami and London. The Inhumans responsible threaten to blackout a city every hour if their demands are not met..._ "

"I call BS." She said immediately.

"I just hope they don't hit LA."

She looked up at him. "Why, afraid of the dark?"

"My brother rides the metro, he'd be stuck in a bad part of town if they did. You know what happens to people during a blackout? They think they can get away with whatever they want."

"That nothing can stop them." Daisy finished his train of thought. "Boy, we'd be in trouble if they did hit…"

All around them, electrics sparked and died, everything but the car they were in. It was a blackout, and in the middle of the day. Robbie had to swerve to avoid the now motionless cars.

"... here." She finished.

The mechanic growled. "Whoever's behind this, I hate them _and_ their timing right now."

He floored the accelerator, the car leaping into motion down the road, between the cars that were unmoving. Daisy kept her eyes on the road but started a far more serious conversation.

"I know you're focusing on getting to your brother but we've got something to deal with on the way."

"What's that?" He questioned, eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.

"What are you going to tell your brother, about… you, me, us?"

"Well Gabe's nowhere near stupid, and he's definitely smart enough to check your alibi, so we'll stick with what you told Canelo. You're my ex from eleventh grade, your van broke down and I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet so you were hitching a ride with me until the blackout happened. That way, if he calls the shop when the power comes back on Canelo can back the story even though he doesn't know the truth."

"Does he know anything about your relationship history?"

"I haven't had a girlfriend ever, which he knows, so an under the rader relationship in my last year at school will pass as believable. He'll just tease me for a bit, then let it alone." Robbie replied, racing to where he apparently knew Gabe would most likely be.

It took them a short while to get there, but they pulled up just in front of some punks that were going towards his brother. Both got out and Daisy studied them.

Their whole demeanour and posture, as well as their attitude, indicated they were just the average low level neighbourhood punks with ego issues the size of Canada, nothing they couldn't take between the pair of them if she judged Robbie's skill level right. Compared to other agents and Inhumans, simple.

"What's this all about?" Robbie demanded in a fearless voice.

"There's no power, and you have wheels that work, so we're taking them. You know the drill."

The leader had a gun, the kind pretty common in this sort of area. The only other one with a weapon was holding a baseball bat. Clearly neither of them knew how to properly use their weapons, since neither were holding them correctly.

The leader, who'd been the one to speak, went right up to Robbie and put the gun under his chin.

"Got a problem with that, homes?"

"No, I don't." The host of the Spirit of Vengeance replied calmly. "I got a problem with you punks thinking you can touch my brother or my car and get away with it.

He grabbed the gun hand and pointed the weapon away from him, her and Gabe, then broke the guy's nose with a swift jab. He tossed the gun to her, then caught the bat being swung at him and clocked the guy around the head with it. She pointed the gun with her uninjured hand at the group.

"You know the drill." Robbie parroted, throwing the bat as far away as he could behind them without looking.

The group of punks ran, and once they were definitely gone, Daisy released her mock firing stance that was mainly for show, making her look like she had no idea what she was doing with the gun. She held it up only with her fingers.

"Ugh, I hate these things."

"Guns are ugly, no doubt about that." Robbie agreed. He looked at his younger brother. "You okay?"

"Still standing, you?" Gabe returned.

"Sunshine and rainbows."

He helped the younger Reyes from his wheelchair into the car, stowing it in the boot. She then gave him the gun and mouthed 'take it apart' when the paraplegic wasn't looking. He emptied out the bullets, removed the main parts from each other and threw them in separate directions.

She got in the back seat to give Gabe easier exit access, the older Reyes got in and they drove off.

He headed straight to where she'd discovered their home to be when she'd staked out Robbie. Once they were there, he got Gabe out, into the house, she got out, then he put it away in the garage, locking both the car and the door.

Daisy felt like an intruder of sorts, so she didn't enter the house before the older Reyes gestured that she could. He also gave her back her jacket that she'd left in the car. She crossed the threshold into the home of her now partner in crime of sorts, although she got the feeling he didn't trust her just yet. That was fair enough, she _had_ fought him, stalked him, got into another fight with him, then only be let free because he didn't trust her out of his sight.

The Reyes home was pretty cosy, and it became quickly clear to her that downstairs was Gabe's living area, and upstairs was Robbie's. Did he even sleep? Yet another part of the enigma that was Robbie Reyes, the Ghost Rider.

"Who's your friend Robbie?" She heard Gabe ask.

Robbie responded quite casually, and his little brother didn't even have a hint of suspicion on his face. "Oh, sorry, forgot you two hadn't met. This is Daisy."

"Hi." She waved a bit awkwardly as the guy who'd sold his soul went off to find some candles and matches. "You're Gabe right?"

"Yep." The boy nodded. "I'm guessing you were with Robbie when the blackout happened?"

"Yeah."

"You know each other? He doesn't let just anyone in the Charger." This kid really did know the daytime side of his brother well, it was quite surprising given the guy was the Ghost Rider at night.

"We used to date in Garfield High, the last year he was there."

She kept the answers short so she wouldn't have to make up anything new hopefully, even though she was good at making covers and knew a fair bit about Robbie and his life from observation and hacking pretty much everything about him that could be accessed by her.

"First girlfriend he's had that I ever heard of, I thought he was just not into girls."

Now _that_ took her by surprise. Did he seriously just… He did. "You thought your brother was gay? For real?"

"Nah, I just teased him about it. Now I see why he was so defensive about his sexuality." Okay, Gabe was definitely the kind of person she would want as a younger sibling if she had one. Well, so far.

"Gabe, you better not be making jokes about me behind my back!" Robbie called as he entered the kitchen with what he went to get.

"No, I'm just finding evidence you're actually straight like you said you were."

The older brother mock glared at his younger brother as she giggled in the background. This kid had some fire to him to be making fun of the Ghost Rider, even though he didn't know about that side of the older Reyes.

"You want lifts to and from school or not?" The mechanic pretended to threaten.

"Hey, you tease me about Maria, I tease you about Daisy." Gabe slyly returned.

"At least I don't try to holler at the first _chica_ who shows she likes me."

"No, you go for the one who I've never knew you had a relationship with and she tells me 7 years after the fact." The younger brother shot back cheerfully, taking a few candles and setting them up around the kitchen.

When Robbie looked up at her, she held up her hands in the 'I surrender' pose. "I'm staying out of this."

"You're already involved." He countered her with a bit of a smile.

When he indicated, she followed him into the living room, out of Gabe's earshot of they spoke quietly.

"Relax, I'm not holding you prisoner." The host of the Spirit of Vengeance assured her. "I don't trust you yet, but act normal around Gabe and it'll go a long way."

"Meeting your brother, fun times. He's smart. And funny." She replied just as quietly.

"Sometimes too funny for his own good, when he gets cheeky."

Robbie fished the bottle of bone healing acceleration pills out of his jeans pocket and handed it over to her. "It's been over six hours, you're in the clear to take more."

"You remembered?" She questioned.

"I fractured your arm, you remember?" He played her back.

"Any vengeance tonight?"

Robbie shook his head at her question. "Not with this blackout, I need to be here to protect Gabe, and you. I know you can fight, but not so well with that arm. None of us leave this house until the power comes back on."

Once they got the house lit up, which she was not allowed to help with because of her arm which was fair enough, the trio sat down in the kitchen for a cold dinner.

"So how's your day go?" Robbie asked the wheelchair bound boy.

"Not bad up until the blackout, I was ref for the basketball lesson today, unbelievable the amount of people that tried to cheat, Science was fun and the rest were decent."

The young man rolled his eyes with a wistful smile. "Only you'd find History not boring."

"It's not that bad!" Gabe protested, grinning too, knowing it was a losing battle.

"It's the subject I skived the most!" Daisy interjected. "Though that's probably because I didn't like lessons at all."

"Rebel much?"

"You got no idea." Robbie cast a knowing look at her. "Daisy got in fights left, right and centre."

"Hey, I gave as good as I got!" She laughed, glad they were making light of the two fights between the pair of them. She was also referencing a few things from her past with S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Up until you ended up on your back, or how you got knocked out in the last fight I remember." He jabbed lightly, referring to how he'd dropped her at work after Canelo left.

* * *

The power came back on fairly into the night, and Gabe turned on the news. The director of S.H.I.E.L.D was on, making an announcement.

" _I assure you that the Inhumans were not behind these blackouts._ "

Robbie noticed her discomfort at seeing the logo of her former colleagues, although he didn't know that she'd worked for them. He put his bare hand on her knee to placate her. It did comfort her some.

Gabe didn't notice the exchange behind him as he sat in his chair watching the broadcast.

" _... An old friend turned the light back on tonight, and that old friend… was S.H.I.E.L.D._ "

The broadcast ended, and the younger Reyes transferred himself to the sofa and grabbed his covers. The young adults went upstairs as he went to bed. Once out of sight and hearing of his brother, Robbie spoke to her.

"You know those guys?"

"I used to work for them." She admitted. "The two guys at Momentum I helped work for them too. The big guy is Mack, and the techie is Fitz."

"Well you don't work for them now, so don't worry. You don't have to deal with that spotlight that they're under, you're not a puppet show like them."

Daisy laughed quietly. "Well look at that, the Ghost Rider has a heart inside that fiery skeleton."

"Just don't tell the guilty that, or they'll start trying to appeal to it."


	4. The Devil's Favourite Creation

Drawing up to the school, Robbie stopped the car and got out. Helping Gabe into his wheelchair, he smiled as he crouched down in front of younger brother he cherished more than anything. "You watch out for yourself, and if anyone gives you trouble you tell me."

"I can fight my own battles Rob." The younger Reyes replied with something between a glare and a pout on his face.

"It's in the job description of being an older brother."

"Tell Uncle Eli I love him and wish me luck, Physics test."

"You don't need luck." The older brother laughed. "Get going!"

Getting back in the Charger, he waved goodbye as Daisy climbed into the passenger seat from the back. Shaking his head with a smile, he drove off as she got comfortable and put the seatbelt on at his insistence. Putting her injured arm down in her lap, she spoke up to make sure he heard.

"So, Uncle Elias Morrow huh? Doing time for a manslaughter charge?"

"You know, I'm constantly reminded that you stalked me for three days." He sighed good naturedly.

"So we're clear, I only looked at you when I hacked, I came across the court order for Gabe's guardianship to be transferred you because of your uncle going to jail by accident." She spoke calmly, no longer pained by her arm so long as she didn't knock it. "I didn't look up Gabe or Eli."

He glanced over for a moment. "Respectful stalking, noted."

"I think a little stalking is okay when the devil's right hand man lets you live."

"You're not wrong." He muttered, which she caught.

"Still wondering why the other guy just walked away?"

"Uh huh."

The drive to the penitentiary was short, given Robbie pushed the speed limit, barely staying on the line. Within an hour, they were arriving at the place.

"So, particular reason we're going to see Uncle Eli?" She asked.

Driving around slowly to the parking lot, he answered. "He worked at the Momentum Lab I burned that spectre at. His work was way above my head, but he loved working there, he'd talk to me and Gabe about it whenever we asked how his day was. If anyone can help make heads or tails out of this thing, he can."

As they pulled into the parking lot, Daisy looked out the window. "Oh hell, we gotta go."

"What?" He asked.

"Drive!"

* * *

"No luck?" Mack guessed.

Coulson put his sunglasses on and tilted his head. "Is it all over my face? Besides, I didn't expect him to open up to a suit anyway. The downside of being a government operative."

The bald man took an expression of disbelief as he looked at the car pulling in.

"No way."

"What?"

He pointed. "It's the car of the matchstick guy from Momentum Labs!"

The former director of S.H.I.E.L.D turned to face in the same direction as Mack, and saw the person in the passenger seat. The person who looked panicked, and he heard yell,

" _Drive!_ "

Shock briefly overtook him. "Daisy…"

"Get in the car, I'm driving!" Mack snapped him out of it. The idea of the big man driving his car, or anyone for that matter was enough to bring him out of his reverie.

"Oh hell no."

They got in the cherry-red 1962 Chevrolet Corvette and immediately followed the black Charger, and the chase began.

* * *

"Can they catch up?" Daisy asked Robbie worriedly.

"Judging by the car, I'd say not given this baby has been transformed by the Rider so many times and I upgrade it every chance I get."

"You better be right about that." She gasped, the situation causing her to be breathless for some reason. "I really don't want to have that conversation with Coulson, he's like a strict rockstar dad."

Zooming past traffic and pulling down into the L.A River, Robbie cracked his neck and grinned fiercely. "Hold onto your breakfast, this is about to heat up!"

His eyes blazed with the devil's fire, and he let out a roar that sounded terrifyingly like the Ghost Rider. The wheels and engine ignited, and the Hell Charger snarled forward, gaining speed with each rotation of the wheels. From behind, they faintly heard a loud ' _Holy crap!_ ' from Coulson.

"You can see through that?!" She shouted over the roaring sound of the engine as it spewed fire.

"Like glass!" He yelled back.

Looking forward again, she tried to warn him of the air distortion ahead. "Robbie, look out!"

With a massive crash, they collided with the lowered nose of a cloaked Quinjet. The collision didn't damage the car, but it put a dent in the aircraft as their heads smacked on the wheel and the dashboard respectively.

Robbie had been knocked out by his head striking the wheel of his Charger, but she was still conscious, and very much so of the small trickle of blood rolling down her forehead. What seemed like and eternity later, she saw the blurry forms of Coulson and Mack outside the driver's side. She heard the former's voice, although it was far off, distant to her.

" _I get his car now right? You know how this works?_ "

Struggling, she managed to raise her uninjured hand and croaked out four words.

" _Like hell you do…_ "

A vibration blast hit Mack square in the torso as he leaned down to investigate her voice, sending him tumbling. Her hand dropped. Her former boss raised his gun and spoke a quick apology before he shot her with an I.C.E.R bullet.

"Sorry Daisy."

* * *

Robbie awoke to find himself in some kind of white cell. He hated white, it reminded him that he'd never get his soul back unless the Rider left him, that the devil had made his mark on him. Looking around, he found Daisy on the floor next to him. Concerned, he scrambled up and checked her pulse. Still alive.

"She's okay, just knocked out."

He looked up at the main window of the cell to see the man she'd called Coulson. "Excuse me if I don't take you at your word Agent Coulson."

"You know my name? How, if I may ask?"

"Daisy told me your name, that how I know it. That's how I know Axe Gun over there is Mack, and your tech guy is Fitz, and that with my powers you wouldn't last a minute." He stated flatly.

"One of them powers mind control?" Mack asked out of nowhere.

"Not as far as I know."

"Then how'd you keep Daisy from running away? Threaten her life? Brainwashing? Intimidation? 'Cause an unknown Inhuman like you probably has something that keeps her in line." The tall, bald man kept throwing accusations at him, insinuating methods of control that he'd never used on anyone but those he interrogated.

"Everyone who finds out about my powers automatically assumes I'm an Inhuman, why is that?" He asked his own question.

Coulson held up his hand to stop Mack and answered. "We've seem inhumans who can change state at will, plus it seems to be the reason behind all things and powers supernatural these days."

He stepped right up to the window as Robbie leant against the frame.

"If you're not an inhuman, then what are you?"

He let his eyes burn with the devil's fire again, taking the man aback as he spoke a single sentence.

"I'm just the man who sold his soul to the devil for vengeance."

Mack called over from across the plane's tail. "Yeah, not buying it."

"He's not lying."

Daisy sat up and accepted Robbie's hand up. She looked out the cell that she remembered all too well, reluctantly acknowledging that they'd been caught by S.H.I.E.L.D. "He traded away his soul to the devil to become the Ghost Rider, no Inhuman could burn a person's soul or transform a vehicle like he does. Trust me, you don't want to meet the other guy. I did."

"So you went head to head with this guy, then joined up with him? That's not you Daisy, you don't just follow random guys who spontaneously combust, which looks painful."

"Times change, and so do people Mack." She replied dejectedly.

"Daisy, I saw him throw you over his shoulder and take you to his car…"

"The other guy did that because he thought I was in too much pain make it back there on my own!" Daisy interrupted. "And I didn't go head to head with him, the moment the other guy took over, I lost."

"Who's 'the other guy'?" Coulson asked as calmly as ever. Robbie answered.

"The Spirit of Vengeance, the thing that turns me into the Ghost Rider. Why do you care?"

"Well, we seem to be after the same thing; answers. You were going to see your uncle weren't you? To get answers?"

" _We_ were. Well, until you made me drive straight into an invisible jet, endangering Daisy's life in the process. Great plan by the way, what was the backup if, say, the crash cracked her skull? Punctured her lung? Broke her neck? I don't think I could stop the other guy from burning you to death, given he seems… invested."

Both of their lack of responses proved his point, that they hadn't thought anything through while pursuing them. His face barely an inch from the reinforced glass, he spoke dangerously.

"If that's how you do a chase, why should I help you?"

That made them think. They knew full well Daisy's bones were more brittle than the average person's, a simple hit from a car exhaust had fractured her arm. Yet, they'd still chosen to have him slam the Hell Charger straight into one of their jets.

Eventually Coulson looked up.

"You're right, we didn't think it through, consider the risks. Daisy could've been killed, both of you could've, I'm sorry."

"I forgive you, but I can't speak for Robbie or the other guy." She told the man quietly.

The host of the Spirit of Vengeance shrugged. "You're the one who knows these guys, it's your call, I just wanted to point out that they need to think about more than just the outcome they want."

With that, the former director pressed a button on the cell, and the doors opened. The pair stepped out, and the soulless man walked up to Coulson.

"I hope you realise I could take this whole plane down if I change."

"I figured." The man shrugged. "But you won't do that, because Daisy's right here too, and you seem to want to avoid her getting hurt."

"Plus, you wouldn't survive the fall either." Mack added.

Daisy rolled her eyes at the shotgun-holding man. "Please, he's survived being stabbed, shot, run over and even I can't break his skeleton with my hand on his chest, he'd make the fall if he changed, which at this altitude he could in time."

Robbie shrugged again. "From experience, death is temporary for me."

As the pair of them were escorted by Mack and Coulson to the Quinjet, she gave him a confused look from behind. "How is death temporary?"

* * *

Getting in to visit Eli was easy, given Robbie had already phoned the prison that day to say he would be coming in. Daisy was allowed in on account of being Robbie's supposed ex who was a family friend, a cover story she'd made up initially just to put him on edge in front of his co-workers while she talked to him, which was coming in very useful. She couldn't claim to have foresight that far, but she was pretty pleased that it was holding up. Luckily he was a private person, so no one doubted it.

The imprisoned uncle came into the visiting room on the opposite side of the booth they'd been assigned, and sat down in the chair, picking up the phone. " _Hey racer, how's my baby doing?_ "

"You mean our baby." Robbie corrected him with a smile. "Replaced the fan belt recently, she's been overheating a bit lately but it's fine."

" _Gabe's good?_ "

"Acing school like always, trying to holler at Janet's little sister, so pretty good."

He looked very happy, seeing his uncle, she realised. He must really believe in and love the man behind the glass barrier. Her attention was brought back when Eli looked up at her and asked his nephew the question they both knew was coming.

" _And who is this young lady? Girlfriend?_ "

"Ex, actually. This is Daisy, we got back in touch recently, but we seem to be mending some bridges we broke." Robbie explained.

He held out the phone to her, and she simple said, "Hi."

" _No need to be shy Daisy, any friend of Robbie or Gabe's is one to me._ " Eli told her kindly as he shifted in his chair. " _It's not Christmas, it's not my birthday._ "

"Can't I just come visit my uncle when I miss him and need help?"

" _Help? With what?_ "

"The past's coming back up. I ran into one of your old colleagues a little while ago, and I saw her on the news later. She's out there killing people, and I don't want Gabe, Daisy or anyone to get hurt."

He pulled the picture the Ghost Rider had taken from Momentum Labs and showed it to his uncle, pointing to the woman in the photo. "Who is she?"

After a pause of consideration, Eli chose to tell them.

" _Dr Lucy Bauer, Joseph's wife._ "

"That's the guy you put into a coma right? What were they getting into up there?" Robbie asked.

" _Madness. They were the project leaders of this privately funded think tank, Momentum Labs, next level R and D. They needed an engineer to help them build their design, said they were very impressed with me. But what they really wanted was someone who wouldn't ask too many questions._ "

"What were you building?"

" _A quantum particle generator, it's a machine that can create matter out of practically nothing at all._ "

The younger man was confused a little. "That sounds impossible."

" _Yeah, it's insane. It defies all the laws of physics, they thought they were pushing boundaries but I thought they were playing God. It blew up in their faces, literally. They should've listened to me. The police said it was an accident, Joe made them move forward, and it killed them. It killed the whole team, his wife. Joe killed them. I was so_ _ **pissed**_ _at what he'd done, I couldn't stop him, I just… I just… I snapped. Now, I'm doing the time, but see Robbie, what I wanted was…_ "

"... revenge." The mechanic guessed the finish of his sentence. "Why didn't you tell me any of this before?"

" _Because you were just a kid. I was supposed to take care of you and I let you down. But these are my demons, not yours._ "

"Trust me, I have enough of my own. One in particular keeps haunting me." Robbie admitted, although Daisy knew he wouldn't tell his uncle that he was the Ghost Rider.

"What could she possibly be after?" She asked, borrowing the phone from the young man on who this was clearly taking a toll.

" _She's gonna go after this book, I don't know what it's called but it helped them built their machine. Apparently it has all the knowledge anyone could ever need._ "

In their ears, the pair heard Coulson say after a moment, " _Wrap this up, we've gotta move._ "

"Thanks _tío_ , I think I'll be able to sleep a little better now." Robbie told his uncle. "I've got to pick up Gabe in a bit, so we'll be going, but I'll be back to see you soon. Might see if I can get a time when Gabe's not in school so we can both come."

" _Take care of him Daisy, and watch out with the arm. Fractures take time to heal so don't try to rush it._ "

"Thanks." She said before putting the phone back. The guards escorted the two parties back to where they were supposed to be, and the pair immediately left the penitentiary, boarding the Quinjet that had brought them there. It was a long trip back to the Zephyr given it was on the move, so they had to dock after catching up.

"What's going on, took a while to catch up to you guys." He asked Coulson and Mack, who were gearing up for some reason.

"Had to get a headstart."

Coulson tucked his pistol into its holster and stood up straight. "We need to make a detour before going after that book, we could use your help if you're still interested in our arrangement."

He was about to demand what was more important than the book, when Daisy caught his arm and shook her head. He got the message, they didn't have time to argue.

They set down in the Quinjet outside a fireworks store. Coulson took charge, directing them.

"Mack, with me, we'll take the shop. You two, if you could take the storage facility next door, that'd be great." He made to go in the shop, but stopped.

"Watch the arm Daisy, it can't take your quakes and I reckon the rest of your bones have about had it for today anyway." He tossed her an I.C.E.R pistol and an extra magazine, then entered the shop.

She stood there for a moment. "People keep telling me that today."

The enhanced pair did reluctantly as they were bid, entering the facility. It seemed quiet, until a masked man with a rifle came right into their path. Before he could do anything, Daisy shot him in the chest. She noticed the tattoo on his hand, and groaned quietly. Robbie looked at her.

"The Watchdogs."

"The guys you're after. Well this just got complicated." He remarked, pulling on his gloves and zipping up his jacket.

She shrugged. "Or this could be the opportunity that replaces the one you ruined for me."

He stopped, and looked back at her.

"You're still mad about that?"

"I wasn't mad, just… annoyed. I might've been slightly mad that you didn't keep the guy you took alive long enough for me to talk to him but vengeance under the bridge."

He gave her a confused look and moved on, ready for a fight. She followed him, equally confused although for a less valid reason. Once she caught up, she asked, "What, that's not a saying that the devil's soul collectors use? I thought it was."

He held up his hand, shushing her. Just as she was about to ask 'What?', he turned the corner and ripped a Watchdog's gun out of his hands. He then slammed the guy into the wall then used a chokehold to allow her to stun him with an I.C.E.R bullet. He dropped the soldier when they both heard an explosion not too far away. Both knew that was where they were supposed to be going.

They raced along the storage garages until they found the right row. An Inhuman Daisy knew, JT James aka Hellfire, was holding a chain he proceeded to set on fire. He swung it back, ready to kill the person in front of him.

Robbie was there in an instant, catching the flaming chain as it arced away from the target, holding it in front of his face.

"Huh."

Slipping out from behind him, Daisy shot and knocked out the five Watchdogs with Hellfire with the gun, dropping them before they could shoot Robbie. She then was recognised by both James and the person on the floor.

"Daisy?"

She found herself saying, "Hey Jemma, been a while. Take the stairs and find Coulson."

"You're here?"

"Later!" She spoke forcefully.

"I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you just made a big mistake." Hellfire told Robbie, who honestly didn't give a damn.

He ripped the chain out of the Australian man's hand and lashed it behind him after Daisy backed out of range.

"Funny, I was going to say the same thing, without the accent."

Hellfire threw the spherical firework that he lit with his Inhuman power over fire straight at Robbie's face, and it blew up on impact. Jemma gasped when he came out unharmed but for a little bit of his flesh that had been taken out of his cheek by the impact. It was glowing red hot with his own power. It was at the moment Jemma decided she'd seen enough and went to find Coulson.

"You really shouldn't have done that." Daisy told James offhandedly, leaning against the wall on her right shoulder. "Now you're get to meet the other guy."

The older Reyes brother turned back to face the Australian, and told him something that struck fear into him.

"It's time to pay for your sins."

Then, his flesh burned off, and the Ghost Rider came to life once more. The chain set ablaze once more, this time with the fire of the devil, and it was around the man in an instant, forcing his arms to his sides.

Manipulating the chain by wrapping it around its hands, the Rider wrenched the bound Australian towards it, then seized throat with its left hand, relinquishing the chain lengths in that hand to do so. Raising Hellfire off the ground, it approached the wall and proceeded to slam him into it. Again. And again. And again. It kept smashing him against the metal door to the storage container, then into the brick wall, until he was thoroughly beaten.

Standing up straight, Daisy got a little closer to the devil's favourite creation. "You mind keeping him alive? It'll stop Coulson from having more to go strict rockstar dad at us for."

It looked at her with curious glowing eyes. Seeming to consider the request, it nodded once, and released JT James from the chain, dropping him to the floor, face down. She shot him twice in the back to make sure he was out.

With another flick, the chain was lashed around the Australian's ankle, then the Rider proceeded to drag him down the corridors. She caught up and walked just behind it, following it out the building. The doors opened seemingly of their own accord when it approached, allowing them out without being touched.

It was quite the surprise for Coulson, Mack and Jemma to see the Ghost Rider stalking out of the building, dragging the rogue Inhuman. It struck a menacing figure.

It threw James to their feet with a wrench of the chain, it uncoiling. Swinging it diagonally down and left, it lashed the chain around its own chest, letting go of it. As it strode past, back to the Quinjet, reverting to Robbie on the way, Daisy followed it past and called,

"Thought you might like him alive, so I asked the other guy nicely."

* * *

"Please tell me you're not going to go full dad 'I'm very disappointed in you young lady' mode."

Coulson looked up from the tablet in his hands at Daisy. "What?"

"It's what I call it when you express your disappointment and tell me off like my dad never did, ringing any bells?" Daisy explained. "Okay, apparently I'm the only one who thinks that."

"If you mean when he tells you that you should've asked for help and that you have to promise to next time, I know what you're talking about." Robbie supported her.

"Yeah, I didn't follow any of that. I'm not going to tell you off, I'm just glad you're safe, which Mr Reyes seems to have been helping with ever since you met him. Other than that, there's nothing else to say."

"I'm sensing a but here…"

"But…"

She groaned. "Knew it, and I'm not even a clairvoyant."

"... we could really use both of your help on this case." Coulson finished.

"But the Watchdogs…"

"Took a hit, they remain a threat, but we have to put them on the back burner for now. There's more pressing concerns."

"I'm sorry Coulson, but for me there's nothing more pressing. I'm sticking to my guns, and you can't stop me, even if you shoot me with your I.C.E.R bullets." She protested emphatically.

Robbie looked over. "As much as I want to sort out this business with the book, I'm with Daisy. I fractured her arm and got in her way, I have to make that up and the demon inside of me is telling me that her score needs to be settled before my uncle's. I can't fight that thing when it gets set on something, so you're gonna have to do this without us."

"Well you're going to have to compromise with it. You two don't need us, fine. Right now we need you."


	5. Hold A Gun To My Head

"How'd your conversation with Coulson go?" Daisy asked as Robbie strode furiously into the Quinjet that was docked on the Zephyr. He blanked her. "That well huh?"

"He won't let me go to get my uncle and brother safe." The soulless man growled, punching the wall of the smaller aircraft.

Pressing keys on her tablet's landscape keyboard, she replied to his frustrated outburst. "I'm not even going to try to defend him given I'm still ticked off that he basically blackmailed us into staying. That's pretty damn low, threatening to reveal us to the new director who, apparently, cares more about S.H.I.E.L.D's public status than its effectiveness."

He noticed her staring intently at her screen. Getting up from the seat he'd sat in, he crouched next to her, studying the complex code across the screen that she was messing with.

"What're you doing with that?"

"Before I was an Inhuman, I was a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, and before that I was a hacker. I may have learnt to kick ass as an agent and Inhuman but I've tried to keep my hacking skills maintained. Before I joined, I hacked S.H.I.E.L.D and they later updated the firewalls by building on them, but I left myself an embedded backdoor which… is still there. Now let me just… yes!"

Suddenly the entire system became open to her, and a banner scrolled text across the screen of the tablet. It read 'WELCOME BACK SKYE'.

"Skye?" Robbie inquired.

"An old name I gave myself as a kid because I didn't like my legal one. I'll change it later, for now… let's listen in."

The cameras in the room Mack and Coulson were in showed their live footage on the screen, and Daisy enabled the sound.

" _Let's inform S.H.I.E.L.D that we're taking an asset into protective custody as part of a routine investigation. Eli Morrow should be able to give up some leads to follow, or at least some clues to this jigsaw with most of the pieces missing. May, want to go to prison? It could be Taco Tuesday._ "

" _I'll go call the warden and find out._ "

On screen, May walked off to do exactly what she said. Robbie felt a snarl rising up from the Spirit of Vengeance, the loudest it had been since Daisy first showed up at the junkyard and it'd spared her. To be honest, he was wondering what took it so long to to get loud enough to feel in his blood again. The temperature of his blood was often a good indication of how much it was bleeding rage.

' _Oh, now you get angry. Where were you when Coulson was blackmailing us?_ ' He thought to it bitterly.

The female Inhuman noticed the devil's fire in his eyes in his reflection on the edge of the screen. Looking up, she stopped with the tablet for a moment and asked him, "Disagreement with the other guy?"

"Wondering why he's taken this long to get pissed off." He replied a little snappily.

"What does it feel like, when it wants to do the whole vengeance thing?"

"My blood heats up when it's pissed, and the desire for vengeance is kind of a wrench on my own will, it pulls at me, urging me to punish them. That usually makes me turn when I let it. But, if the revenge is my own, it's pretty much impossible for me to resist, and I go straight for them once I have a chance. Hold a gun to my head, I won't go for it because I'm only invincible as the Rider."

Locking the tablet, she set it aside and patted the floor next to her, a clear invitation to sit down which he took, leaning against the wall alongside her. "That sounds like it sucks."

"At the end of the day, I asked for this so I have to bear it." He told her.

There was a silence for a bit, then she asked,

"How long have you been the Rider?"

He met her eyes with his own ones. "Five years, give or take. That night, everything changed for me and Gabe. You looked me up right? What happened five years ago?"

She had to think about that. Gabe had been paralyzed 5 years ago, Eli had been sent to jail on the attempted manslaughter charge, and there had been a drive-by attack on the brothers while Robbie had been driving them around the neighbourhood.

"The Fifth Street Incident." She realised.

"Yeah. They stole Gabe's legs for him, nearly killed him too." He admitted. "As I lay there on that road, I made the deal with the devil, my flesh burned away for the first time, and I was the Rider. That was the one time it didn't heal my wounds, but it kept me alive, long enough for someone to report the whole thing to the paramedics, and by the time they got there I'd changed back, and still had all my injuries."

"Then…"

He nodded. "That's right. I became the Rider for Gabe, to avenge his loss."

"You sold your soul to protect him. That's the most personal sacrifice you could ever make for him. I only know your history, and I've only known you for a couple weeks, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't have done anything more for him in that moment."

"I know, I just keep wishing I'd been able to do more."

A kind of redundant question came to mind. "Does it hurt? When you change?"

"Every time. The slower the change, the longer it causes me pain."

The intercom sounded, Fitz's voice echoing in the Quinjet. " _Daisy, Mack needs you and the burning man in Control._ "

"So I'm not even worthy of a name now?!" Robbie yelled to the ceiling.

" _Sorry, sorry. It's… Robbie right?_ "

"He just looked that up." Daisy told him as she got to her feet, then she pulled him to his. "To be fair, I think you freaked him out by changing then burning one of the ghosts in front of him."

"Well people better get used to it, because the other guy is going full rage again."

They walked quickly to the control centre of the plane and were met by Mack, who refrained from making any comments. Fitz himself then took the metaphorical stand and explained the situation to them.

"Okay, Coulson and May went to go get Eli Morrow from Southridge Penitentiary to get some answers to this whole mess, then Lucy Bauer turned up and seems to have infected the prison staff, now they're trapped in the warden's office. We need to get both them and Eli out safely, but there's no conventional way in so we're gonna have to do this the hard way.

He then pointed out the three people in need of assist, or rescuing if they preferred the term, and then set up the two teams. "Okay, Daisy will be the one going to get Coulson and May, I'll be here coordinating, and Mack will be with Robbie, getting Eli Morrow out."

"That's a decent plan, but there's one problem." Robbie interrupted. "You stuck me with the guy who hates my guts."

"Consider it a deterrent against going Freddie Krueger on anyone down there then. We have cases of sanity to counter the psychosis those ghosts create by touch, and you inject at the base of the skull."

"Freddie Krueger kills kids, Robbie punishes the guilty, how is that a fair comparison?" Daisy asked.

Fitz gave her an exasperated look. "Really? That's your complaint?"

"No, my complaint is Coulson blackmailed us into staying on board and helping, but you're not him so I wasn't going to bring it up. You think either of us wanted to stay here? I'd much rather get my ass kicked for the third time by Robbie than be here." She shot back.

Taking one of the I.C.E.R pistols, she tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. Snagging a couple extra magazines, she walked off to the back of the plain where Robbie was already headed. She found him pulling on his gloves, clearly annoyed he had to work with Mack who had something against him.

Going around to the boot, she opened it and pulled out her bag, from which she extracted her gauntlets that absorbed the vibrations from her arms and her suit, which didn't have the emblem of S.H.I.E.L.D given she'd removed it. She then pulled them on.

"Hey." She called to the other renegade aboard the Zephyr. He looked up. "Let's get this over with, then we can ignore them again."

He nodded, lashing the chain he'd taken from Hellfire around his chest, and the whole group entered the containment module, which dropped them into the prison.

"Where're the guards?" She heard one of the two agents that were accompanying her ask.

"Not here obviously, isn't sight a requirement to be an agent? Then again, common sense is too." She jabbed at him sarcastically.

"Daisy!"

"Shut it Mack."

Mack himself just indicated for Robbie to go with him, and she was left with Agent Quiet and Agent Dumb as she'd nicknamed them. Taking the lead, she went straight into the prison by quaking open the door.

* * *

' _Keep a lid on it._ ' Robbie told the Spirit of Vengeance mentally as he strode through the prison after the big guy who didn't like him. He then caught sight of a large but short man, and he felt it roar louder than ever. It hadn't been this angry since… the Fifth Street Locos that'd killed him and robbed Gabe of his freedom to walk. This was personal vengeance, not another's, damn!

He then felt a pistol at the base of his skull, and heard Mack's voice.

"This is not the objective. Move along."

The demon inside him settled slightly, just enough for him to consciously walk away from the cell. He'd been right about the gun to the head then. Good to know it valued his life over revenge, he'd use that threat more often then.

Even though he did admit that the shotgun wielder being prepared to shoot him meant he could keep the other guy in check, he really wanted to deck him for that.

* * *

Letting the agents shoot the out of control guards, Daisy quaked the door open, to find Coulson and May on the other side. He gave her a cautioning look. "Wasn't this supposed to be an I.C.E.R only op?"

"Screw your rules, I don't work for you." She retorted. "No emblem, no obligation."

Turning around she headed back the way she'd come, quaking open another locked door and stepping through the frame into the corridor. On her way down the corridor, she spotted a guy she'd landed in prison, a Watchdog. Before he could say anything, she propelled him into the wall with a vibrational blast.

At that moment, Lucy Bauer's ghostly form appeared, and she gave a wicked grin as she pulled the lever that unlocked the cells in that block.

"Oh hell." May groaned.

Slamming her hands on the ground, Daisy knocked all the inmates against the walls of their cells with a shockwave, buying enough time for her to shatter the lock on the gate up ahead and all of them to get through it. Coulson and May, who'd followed her, shot the inmates when they got too close as they ran through the prison, her breaking open doors as needed during their retreat.

"Go! Go! Go!" Her former boss yelled, then the three proceeded to to barricade the door as best they could.

They ran across the cafeteria, following Fitz's directions to a secure cell block. May went immediately through the door, Coulson holding it open for her to follow. "We're not gonna make it!"

Making a split second decision, she shoved him through the door, slammed it, then broke the door handle off, preventing any further access.

"As much as I don't like you right now, you're going to make it." She told him, then ran and jumped onto a table, readying herself for the horde of inmates incoming. She thrust her hands forward, blasting several back, halting them for a moment or two. She did it again when they started charging once more.

She kicked the first in the face, then whirled punched another. Leaping from the table, her knees clamped another's head, and she rolled on the floor, flipping him. She saw one at the back pick up a knife, and knew this fight was life or death.

* * *

They headed into what looked like a gas and water hub, Mack asked him, "What was you deal with that guy?"

"Forget it."

"I can't do that, that thing inside you is my responsibility."

"No, it's mine." He corrected the taller man. After a pause. "Look, that guy was part of a gang that put my brother in a wheelchair and killed me, both of us wanted nothing more to burn that guy to ash."

"Then why didn't you?"

"You had a gun to my head, guess which one the other guy is more concerned with, my life or revenge."

The next thing he heard was bullets hammering into the wall from Mack's shotgun. Robbie whirled around to see one of the ghosts dissipating. The bullets flew again, but in another direction.

"We're not alone." Mack told him.

"I guessed."

Seizing the chain wrapped around his chest, he uncoiled it and set it on fire, nodding at the bigger man. He ducked, and the soulless man lashed out with it, burning the ghost to nothingness like he'd done at the Momentum Lab.

"Ghost busted." The shotgun axe owner muttered.

Mere seconds after he said that, another appeared, slipping through and infecting the agent with ease. Said agent tried to swing for it several times, but failed with each swing.

The blazing chain lashed around the ghost's neck, and it too burned.

Mack took an injector, positioned it at the base of his skull, then activated it. He cried out in agony, and collapsed. But Robbie wasn't aware of his pain, instead, he felt that of another, heard the splash of blood against a cold stone floor, that of one who wasn't guilty in the eyes of the Spirit of Vengeance.

Innocent blood had been spilled.

He roared in his own excruciating pain as his flesh burned away, and the chain retook its place around his chest. He became the Ghost Rider once more, then strode away, leaving Mack on the wet floor.

* * *

Coulson watched Daisy wince as blood fell from the cut on her cheek, painting the floor. Decking the guy who'd cut her, she kept fighting. But in his mind he knew she'd been hurt, the tables had turned on her, and she would eventually lose. But, that thought didn't stop her elbow from striking a prisoner's jaw, nor did it stop her from booting another in the groin then slamming his head into a table.

Performing a spinning kick, she dropped another, but they just kept coming. Now she was playing the defensive, having to evade, flee from and block attacks thrown at her.

She was about to quake again, when one of them ripped off her right gauntlet. The left followed, and he knew it would be pointless to try for her powers at this point. An arm locked around her throat from behind. He found himself yelling,

"NO!"

Then, just after her lungs gave out, and she was pulled down to the floor, all hell broke loose.

An explosion threw the double doors off their hinges, and from the burning arch strode the Ghost Rider, blazing with fury and spewing the fire of the devil from its mouth, literally. Many caught fire, and burned. More fell prey to the inflamed chain that swung about like a pendulum, carving a wake of infernal destruction through them.

Robbie was gone, and in his place was the devil's soul collector. It coiled the chain around one arm and charged them with a roar of hatred.

Seizing one by the throat, it threw him at the wall, but he never made contact because he burned up before he could. The Rider raised one clenched fist, and snarled at the criminals deafeningly.

From the holes in the gloves where knuckles should have been, four jets of the devil's fire spewed forth. In the blink of an eye, it was standing over Daisy. Like the fools they were, the inmates all rushed in, dozens of them, all going straight for the flaming skeleton that was the devil's favourite creation. They went in from all directions, never know, never suspecting what was to come.

In a great wheel of carnage, the Ghost Rider unleashed the flaming chain once more, turning in a full circle and disintegrating them all the moment the chain passed through them.

By the time Coulson and May could see again, everything was on fire, and in the middle of it all was the Ghost Rider, lifting Daisy in its arms. She was unconscious, beaten and bruised, with a cut on her cheek, but she was alive, and safe in its fiery grasp.

The flames spiked, and then it was gone, taking her with it.

* * *

Striding down the cellblock corridors, the Rider caught the familiar pull of the last Fifth Street Loco as it passed the cells that the prisoner's themselves shut in terror of it. It turned its flaming skeletal head, and stalked towards the man. The glowing orange eyes bore into the soul of the man as raging fire poured out of the similarly glowing cracks in the skull.

" _Hombre fácil. Usted no quiere hacer esto._ " He stuttered.

It didn't answer, just spewed a liquid flame that set his entire cell on fire. It then walked away, with Daisy held in its arms, leaving the man to burn in the blazing box that his cell had become.

" _¡Oh Dios mío! ¡No!_ "

There was no gun to its head, not anymore.


	6. Dark Secrets

As he walked up to the house he shared with Gabe, Robbie let out a breath. It was about time Coulson let him go get his brother. Uncle Eli had been kidnapped from the jail by Lucy Bauer after the Spirit of Vengeance had taken over because Mack hadn't made it there in time, so he had to get his brother aboard the Zephyr because the chances were she knew where they lived. Why the plane? Because ghosts couldn't fly.

He made his way up the short path and knocked on the door. He heard his brother's voice on the other side of the door, it was muffled, and then the locks undoing. Waiting until he knew Gabe would be clear of the door, he opened it and entered the house.

"Robbie? Where have you been?! You've been gone for days!"

"Sorry, things went crazy." He grinned sheepishly, glad to see his little brother. "You would not believe the week I've had."

"Well? What happened?" Gabe asked him with a slightly demanding tone but a smile too.

Closing the door, Robbie shrugged. "That depends, how much time you got?"

"More than you probably."

"How about we take a walk and I'll tell you?"

"Works for me." Gabe replied offhandedly.

The older brother opened the door, the younger rolled out of it and he followed, closing the door he'd held open. Almost as soon as they reached the pavement, the Quinjet he'd been dropped off by landed in the street, decloaking and lowering the ramp. The paraplegic looked up at him with an expression of disbelief.

The soulless man shrugged again whilst giving him a grim smile. "I never said how far we were going."

They got on the Quinjet, which after a short flight docked with the Zephyr, and they got aboard the biggest plane ever made. Then they went to the back of the plane, but Robbie crossed Mack on the way, who he'd avoided since the incident at the prison.

The taller man grabbed him by his jacket and pulled him close, ignoring Gabe's protest.

"Hey! Let go of my brother!"

"You got some brass, changing and walking out on me like that back at the prison. You even give me the slightest **hint** of doing that again, and I will empty my shotgun into you. You hear me?"

Robbie seized the hand on his jacket in a vice grip, using the strength of the Rider in his human form. "Hands off the jacket. There won't be a next time for that, I'm done being your ghost busting attack dog. When Coulson wants something done, tell him I'm **through** with his terms."

Unbelievably to his younger brother, he physically _peeled_ Mack's hand off of his jacket, then let go, walking away.

They continued to the back of the plane, where they found Daisy sitting on the hood of the Charger. She looked up as they entered what she considered her lurking space and greeted them.

"Heard Mack from down here, he still mad at you?"

"When isn't he?" He returned.

"What was that guy's problem? Why'd he start on you Robbie? And what happened to you, Daisy?"

Hearing Gabe's three questions, the pair shared a knowing glance. She answered first.

"I got into a fight with a bunch of guys bigger, meaner and more persistent than me. Got cut on the face, beat up, the usual. Don't visit prison when the inmates are out, they hate it when you're the one who put them away." She answered, telling the truth. There was no sense in lying at this point.

"Why, are you an agent?"

"I used to be, vigilante is probably the best word for me now."

The wheelchair bound teen turned to him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to. For a long time." Robbie admitted. "But, how do you tell your brother that you…"

"Joined up with a vigilante? Over dinner, after school, I don't know."

"No…" He stopped Gabe right there. It was time to tell his brother one of the dark secrets he hid for so long, that he'd never wanted to have to tell him. But, the truth will come out and all that. Time to tell the truth.

He met his brother's gaze, facing it head on. "How do you tell your brother that you sold your soul to the devil?"

"What do you mean?"

At that moment, Fitz came running in. "You guys need to hide! The new director's here, and he wants to take you two into custody! Get in the cell!"

Knowing this guy was probably a better judge of precautions than him in this situation, Robbie did as he said, taking his brother's wheelchair and moving it into the white Containment Module Coulson had put him in before, followed by Daisy. The techie hit the close button and sent them below the plane and out of sight.

That over, the soulless man sunk down to sit at the bottom of the cell. Collecting himself, he looked up.

"What do you remember about the Fifth Street attack?"

Gabe shrugged.

"You were sneaking out with the Charger when I came home, planning to go racing with one of the Fifth Street again. I warned you that they were called Locos for a reason, but you pointed out that I needed to live a little and not be all work and no play like _tío_ , and I came along with you on the condition you wouldn't help me with my homework. I'm not seeing how this relates, that night was just bad luck…"

"There's no such thing as luck, only choices and consequences. And my bad choices that night led to today." Robbie interrupted. When the teenager glanced to Daisy, she nodded.

"In my experience, that's the truth."

"The worst one I made that night…" He continued. "... was bringing you along. Now what else do you remember?"

"You explained why you didn't go back to school in the car, then the Locos pulled up in front of us and chucked a molotov on the hood. You promised to get us out of there, and you drove us away. Problem was, they'd come prepared for a chase, so they got level with us on the highway, then they shot us up.

"I got hit in the chest, and the next thing I know, the car's in the air, smashing down into the road. After that, it's just black for a bit, then I remember seeing you lying on the road, and you weren't moving. I tried to call out to you, but you didn't respond. I was sure you were dead."

The older brother nodded. "Because I was dead."

"That's crazy."

"Is it?" Daisy questioned. "I can create vibrations strong enough to bring down an underground hangar and cause avalanches, aliens exist, the norse God of Thunder hangs with a supersoldier, a gamma mutant, an artificial mutant and an fully sentient android, and Sokovia was turned into a meteor. And you think coming back to life is impossible?"

"Keep going." Robbie insisted.

"Then the Good Samaritan turned up. I heard his motorcycle pull up, and he pulled me out of the wreck. Then he went over to you, bent down to check on you, and you moved. You were alive."

Then he shook his head. "That's not what happened. The first part is like you said, the fire, the chase, the shooting. But what I remember most was feeling like I screwed up. Because of me, you were going to die. We both were."

"We didn't. We survived." Gabe tried to assure him. But he shook his head again.

"You did, you lived. Now this is the part I never told you, the thing I tried to hide."

Both of them were paying full attention to him now.

"When I was thrown from the car, I begged God, I begged the universe, I begged anyone that would listen that you be spared. I swore that I'd give anything to save you."

The emotions he kept buried deep were rising up now, and the Spirit inside him was resonating to his words, acknowledging their truth. As much hatred and rage it was, it was the only thing that truly understood him, because it was a part of him. He felt Daisy's hand on his knee, and he heard her voice.

"Don't stop there." She told him kindly. "Then what?"

He slowly gazed up, and looked her in the eyes. "Then I hit the street… and I died."

He was fully aware of the change in the way both of them were regarding them, he knew what it would be like.

"Then there's nothing, there's just darkness. Then I heard a voice. It was asking me if I wanted a second chance, did I wanted to punish those who hurt my brother? Did I want to avenge my own death? I answered yes, more than anything yes. And you're right. There was someone there when I came to. But it wasn't a Good Samaritan."

He gritted his teeth for a moment, then continued.

"It was the Devil. Whatever was inside him, he passed it into me."

"The Ghost Rider." Gabe whispered, realising the truth.

"That was the deal I made. I swore to go after those who spilled innocent blood, and I was brought back to life, but without my soul."

His young brother was shaken, like his world was crumbling. After a long few moments, he spoke. "So… the thing the devil put in you… it turns you into the Ghost Rider? Made you kill all those Locos?"

Robbie nodded.

"It's called… the Spirit of Vengeance. Every generation, it takes a host. Sometimes it's passed on by the previous one, like with me, sometimes it comes directly from the devil himself but one thing that remains the same… it craves vengeance, and it starts with the scores the host themself agreed to settle, usually their own. After that, it seems to take up other innocent people's vendettas, and resolves them."

"By killing?" The teenager asked solemnly.

"The Rider before me had another way that burnt the eyes of his targets and reflected all the wrongs they'd done to others on them, but I don't have it. Killing is how its done it for the last 5 years."

Then, suddenly, the container they were in began to rise. They were being brought back aboard. The window rose above the deck, and they heard the director say to Coulson,

"I've been on the Zephyr enough to notice when the Containment Module is missing."

They'd been discovered. Feeling the deja vu of when Coulson and Mack captured them, the enhanced pair stood up and eyed the director cautiously as he looked back at them.

"S.H.I.E.L.D can't be associating with a murderer and a known fugitive Phil, so I'll be taking these two." The director smiled.

"You don't have to worry about that." Robbie called angrily. "We were planning on leaving anyway but you arrived before we could go. Let us go and we won't tarnish the image you want the public to see."

"You'll get a fair trial."

"I don't think you can put me on trial." He retorted.

"We'll take every appropriate action, once we've landed." The director turned to Coulson and said, "Turn this plane around, we're going back to HQ where these people will be detained and charged."

"We're not your attack dogs Coulson!" Daisy yelled through the cell.

Robbie crossed the cell to the door. "No way in hell are we going back to their base, we're leaving with or without their cooperation."

He tried to pull the doors open, but they wouldn't budge. Outside, Coulson was still trying to negotiate with the director.

"Sir, I don't think you're considering that these two aren't working with or for S.H.I.E.L.D, they want exactly the opposite as a matter of fact."

"Securing a known fugitive and a killer is more important than whatever operation you've got going on here."

"Jeffery, I'd argue that Daisy and Robbie are already secure, we should…"

"It's Director Mace, and I'd be more amenable to your suggestions if you'd been honest with me from the start! But by wasting my time, you've wasted my goodwill, now turn the plane around and return to HQ!" Mace snapped.

"We're not going back to their base!"

Robbie's yell caught their attention, as well as the rattle as he drove his fist into the door with all his enhanced strength. The Spirit of Vengeance was raging at Mace getting in the way of its intentions, and it'd had enough of being in the cell. Daisy's voice reached him across the small space.

"Robbie! Don't give them more reasons to be afraid of you."

"It's not me they need to be afraid of!" He yelled, punching the door with each sentence. "It's the other guy! And he wants out!"

He continued to punch the door, and she heard Mace ask Coulson, "Will it hold?"

"No one's broken out yet and it's held some pretty potent individuals." Was the response.

"Robbie stop!" She yelled at him as she felt the malevolent presence of the Spirit becoming noticeable, signifying the beginning of the transformation.

She didn't heard Gabe's question as Robbie turned to face them, groaning in pain as his flesh began to burn away. With a roar of agony, he sharply shook his head and the rest burned off, revealing the skull on fire that was the head of the Ghost Rider.

It resumed Robbie's pummeling of the door, striking the white hexagonal patterned container with at least triple the force he had. She faintly heard Mace ask if he was Inhuman, and Coulson tell him that the soulless man had made a deal with the devil.

With an unholy level of strength, the Rider shattered the windows of the door as both parts broke and fell against the wall. In disbelief, she followed it out of the cell, and stood, shellshocked, as it charged Mace.

"Stay back, I've got this." The director declared arrogantly, throwing it against the back of the plane, between the Charger and Coulson's car.

' _Oh no you don't._ ' She thought.

As she thought, the devil's bounty hunter quickly got Mace on the defensive, its swift, furious blows driving him back against the wall. Raising him off his feet, it slammed him into the railing of the ladder to the level above, easily bending it beneath his back. Again and again, it smashed its gloved skeletal fist into his face, silent but for its snarls and blazing skull.

"Robbie, that's enough!"

Coulson tried to pull the Ghost Rider off of Mace, but it sent him flying across the plane with a fierce backhand.

"Stop!"

It didn't.

"We'll do what you want!"

It just kept beating the living hell out of the director, ignoring the former one completely. The Spirit was tired of this man getting in the way, and it would teach him a lesson, by beating it into his skull until he ceased to be an obstacle.

"Robbie no!"

Another punch rocked the sturdy man's head, and he was dazed and dizzy now.

"We'll let you leave! Stop!"

Daisy snapped out of her funk then, and quickly put herself between Mace and the Ghost Rider, praying that it wouldn't go through her to get to him. It paused, its fist reared back, and that was enough opportunity for Gabe to get the message and yell at it.

"Robbie!"

Its head whipped around, and it stared at the teenager in the wheelchair.

"You said that it was the Spirit that turns you into this, well I believe you can turn yourself back. So fight it! Stop letting it push you around, you're better than this!"

With what seemed to be reluctance, it released Mace, letting him drop to the floor. Its skull went out, and flesh reformed over it, restoring Robbie to his own body. The moment his eyes reformed, guilt was clear in them, as clear as the damage the other guy had inflicted on the Containment Module.

"I'm sorry Gabe, Daisy."

That was all he said, then he reentered the broken cell and sat down on the floor again.

* * *

" _Just to be clear, me and Robbie are helping you out with this, then we're gone._ " Daisy told Coulson across the comms.

"I know." The man replied as everyone checked their weaponry in the Quinjet.

The squad moved out, Robbie hanging at the back. They spread out through the facility, and he stuck with Coulson, May and Mack. Suddenly, comms went on the fritz, and Lucy Bauer appeared behind them. Knowing what he had to do, he faced her.

"Go, I'll finish off the ghost problem. Find my uncle."

They did as he said, and he was left alone with the spectre of a woman. She asked, " _Am I supposed to be afraid of you?_ "

"My uncle is Eli Morrow." He stated.

" _Of course. I've seen your picture. You're his nephew Gabriel, like the angel._ "

"No, I'm the other one." He told her, his dark brown eyes lighting up with the devil's tormenting fire.

" _It wasn't supposed to be you boys. Joe hired that gang to take out Eli._ "

He stared at her incredulously. "You think that makes me feel better? My brother is in a wheelchair because of that attack!"

" _I don't care how it makes you feel, I just wanted you to understand why I'm going to kill him. I had a husband I loved, work that challenged and thrilled me, and just as everything I dreamed of was in my grasp,_ this _happened. But I'm going to make it all right. Don't take this personally._ "

She walked through him, but as she passed out the other side, he grabbed her arm and pulled her back to face him. " _How?_ "

"Maybe I wasn't clear about who I am." He declared angrily, but maintaining a cool facade to mask it.

"I'm Robbie, the one who sold his soul. How many innocent people have died because of what you've done? I am here to make you pay for your actions, there are consequences for playing God."

" _Me?! Your uncle is the one who wants to play God! He is the one who started this whole nightmare! You're just like your uncle, you have the same fire!_ "

"No, mine's worse." He promised. "Because it comes from the devil."

Then, like all the other ghosts, he burned her to nothingness, ignoring her screams. Like a tidal wave, a blast of white energy struck him, and the world turned dark.


	7. A New Deal

She didn't believe it. Daisy stared, disbelieving what was taking place on the surveillance footage on the Zephyr's monitor. In a wave of energy, Robbie, Coulson and Fitz had just… vanished.

She glanced down at Gabe, who also didn't want to believe his brother was gone. Just as the director started to speak, she interrupted him.

"Whatever you're going to say, don't."

Everyone looked at her.

"I see the way you're all looking at that screen. We don't know what happened down there, so we can't assume anything." She told them. Her personal belief didn't let her think they were dead, Robbie and Coulson had both been dead before and it hadn't stopped them from coming back.

"Daisy…" Mack started.

Mace held up his hand. "It's okay. This is a process."

"Do us all a favour and shut the hell up pretty boy." She snapped at him. "I don't want to hear another word out of that silver-tongued mouth of yours."

"You're stomping on eggshells here Daisy, and your fire demon friend isn't here to protect you, so I'd ask that if you won't mind your language, you at least lower your tone. I don't like you speaking to anyone that way." May tried to threaten her.

"In case you're forgetting May, I can shatter your entire skeleton, so don't test me. Besides, this is S.H.I.E.L.D, the impossible is the everyday, the machine ghosted that Lucy woman, is it so far fetched to believe it could've turned them invisible or something? Maybe they're in one of those boxes? I can't believe you guys of all people are willing to write them off so easily. Call Simmons, or Radcliffe for all I care, figure those things out."

Daisy then took Gabe's wheelchair handles and pushed him out of the control room, back down to the Charger in the back of the plane.

"They're my closest family, but I feel like I don't know them at all." He spoke the moment she sat down next to him. "They both… I knew Robbie wasn't all there in the head but I thought that was because of me, but I was afraid that was because of me, that I was holding him back."

"Gabe… You were the whole reason he endured having that thing in him, why he lived with it day after day. You kept him smiling, even in his darkest of days." She told him.

"I wanted him to take some time, figure himself out. I didn't know that he was dealing with something that could control his life _so_ much."

Even though she hadn't known him for very long, she knew he needed someone to keep him grounded now, so she pulled him into a hug. He clung onto her arm as she talked to him, held him and kept him right in his own mind.

"Your brother loves you, more than anything."

"I just wish we'd talked more. You really think he's not gone?"

"I know the feeling when someone's… gone… and I don't feel it now." She spoke softly as she let go of him, sitting back in her fold-down seat, keeping her hand on his. "Plus, your brother is _really_ stubborn."

"You have no idea." Gabe told her with a bit of humour.

At that moment, Mack, in full gear, leather jacket, gloves and shotgun axe on his back, hit the open button for the Zephyr's exit and mounted his bike. An agent tried to get him to stop but he punched the suited man and sent him tumbling. Then he drove away.

She stood up and ran her hand through her hair. "What the hell?"

* * *

Robbie rounded a corner and spied his uncle up ahead. Advancing fast on the man that was approaching him, he called out. "I heard some troubling things from Lucy. You tried to kill them? You were behind this the whole time!"

He lunged for Eli's throat, only pass right through him. Then he heard the agents approaching and speaking to the man.

" _Mr Morrow, we're here to escort you out of here._ "

"What did you do?" He demanded of his crazed uncle, examining himself, then looking at him as he gazed at the dagger sized shard of carbon in his hand. When they saw it, one of the agents called out to the others, raising his gun.

" _He's armed!_ "

" _Tío_ keep your head man, don't do anything stupid!" He told the man whom he couldn't touch.

" _Beautiful, no? Pure carbon._ "

When asked, Eli dropped the shard of carbon, and it shattered on the floor. Sensing danger, Robbie tried to warn the agents. "Get away from him!"

By the time he finished his sentence, they were all dead, carbon spikes having erupted from their chests. They dropped to the ground, and the crazy and newly powered engineer created a wall of carbon to prevent people from following him.

Mack and May came from the nearest corridor, guns at the ready. Upon seeing them, he tried to apologies. "I'm so sorry, I couldn't help them!"

They didn't seem to register him, then he realised.

"You can't hear me can you?" He sank to the ground. "I couldn't stop him."

"It's not your fault."

He looked up to see Coulson gazing down at him. Fitz was with him.

"You see me?" He asked.

Coulson nodded. "Yeah Robbie, we see you."

He accepted the hand up despite his differences with the man, deciding to take what company he could get right now. "What'd he do to us?"

* * *

"You know, I hate watching my own demise." Coulson commented as the others, who could neither see nor hear them, watched their disappearance.

"This isn't death, trust me." Robbie rebutted him calmly. "I feel… sick. My stomach hurts. And the lights are darker right?"

"The lights… their voices are hard to hear. They can't penetrate wherever we are."

"What do you mean, where we are? You understand what this is?" The former director asked Fitz, questioning his statement.

"I think I understand why Lucy and her friends looked like ghosts now. They were out of phase with our reality."

The soulless man didn't understand any of the dimension talk Fitz was using. Suddenly, he felt freezing, like all of the heat had drained out of his body and he was in Canada with no clothes, or something. Then the agony began, and he felt the Spirit of Vengeance attack him from within with a fury he'd never felt.

He hit the deck of the Zephyr, screaming and crying out. He couldn't even hear Fitz or Coulson right now.

"We're being dragged down… he doesn't want to go... he won't go."

They struggled to understand what he meant, but he didn't have the tolerance for the pain to try to explain what he was talking about. "He won't go!"

He was wrenched upright by some unseen force, and then he felt the pain, agony and even the Spirit of Vengeance leave him. The other two 'untouchables' that were with him questioned as it took control of Mack and left on his bike in his body. It struck him.

"He's going after the Chinatown crew!"

Daisy grabbed her jacket and threw it on, speaking to Gabe as she cross the plane. " _Tell May what happened, and if you get the chance, never tell your brother about this._ "

"Oh, we're way past that." He responded, even though she didn't hear him.

He jumped in the Charger as Daisy got in and drove it away, down the ramp and after Mack.

* * *

Swerving around a corner in the Charger that she hoped Robbie would never find out she borrowed, Daisy chased Mack down the streets. Drawing level with him, she yelled out the window. "Pull over! What are you doing?!"

"What needs to be done! Don't get in my way!" Was the response she got, and Mack increased the speed he was riding at.

He went down an alley, and she followed. Unfortunately, she scraped the right side of the car against the wall, causing masses of sparks to fly.

"It heals itself." She assured herself. "Scientifically impossible, self-healing car."

She pulled out of the alley after him, but he managed to ditch her by going into traffic. But, that wouldn't be good enough to ditch her for long. She reversed, and declared to herself, "This isn't over."

Not long after she pulled her attempt at finding another way around, she saw two Chinatown guys running across the pavement.

"Well this looks like the place."

She shot inside the building in the Charger, and smacked into one of them as she pulled off a wheelspin and got out. She quickly dismantled them and ran to find Mack. when she found him, she heard him speaking.

"... I could survive off his pain for years. I know where you're being dragged down to, I've escaped it before."

"Mack…" She breathed. "You need to come with me."

"I'm never going back."

His eyes burned with the devil's fire as he faced her, like she'd seen Robbie's do several times by now, and revealed the Ghost Rider within. It was at that moment she knew she'd made a mistake. She thought it was Mack, but it apparently the Spirit of Vengeance had taken over his body. On the plus side, it might mean Robbie hadn't been vaporised, but if so, it also meant he was weakened and unable to return without it.

Without warning, it seized her by the throat, and lifted her almost two feet off the ground. She was hardly aware of her legs dangling after a few seconds, too busy trying to avoid suffocation.

* * *

Going right past the thugs that couldn't see, hear or touch him, he made his way into the back where he knew the big, shotgun wielding man to be. "Mack."

Mack turned to face him, an expression he'd never seen on the dark-skinned man's face.

" _No… You're smarter than that._ " He saw the devil's fire in the tall man's eyes, and he knew.

"You."

" _I've been a voice in your head all these years, now finally we get to speak… face to face._ "

"I've wanted you gone." Robbie admitted to it. "But our work isn't finished. Eli is out there, and we need to stop him."

" _We? There is no 'we'._ " It rebuked him.

" _Your time is over._ "

" _Please, no, don't kill me!_ " The demonic spirit threw the man it was holding against the wall, knocking him out.

" _Stay._ "

"We had a deal, you still owe me vengeance." He told the voice that used to be in his head, pointing at it in Mack's body.

" _Your neighbourhood is soaked in the blood I spilled for you._ "

"None of that matters unless I take down the monster behind all this. Eli, he's my blood."

The other guy advanced on him, stopping about five feet away and standing opposite him in the corridor. " _He will meet me too._ "

"You can't hold onto Mack's body forever, he's a good man, he doesn't have vengeance in him."

" _It's not ideal, but Mack has a lot of pain. He lost Hope. I could survive off his pain for years. I know where you're being dragged down to, I've escaped it before._ " It told him as he fell to his knees, feeling the agonising pull.

Daisy appeared at that moment, and Robbie pleaded. "Come back, and I'll ride with you forever."

" _Mack… You need to come with me._ "

" _I'm never going back._ " The Spirit of Vengeance told him, then turned to face her.

It grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground, ever so slowly choking her with its grip on her neck. Seeing that, he became panicked and desperate, not wanting her to get hurt.

"Let her go!" He yelled at the Ghost Rider that Mack had become. "You spared her before, let her go!"

" _She is innocent, yet she confronts me. This is a problem._ " It replied, still looking at her as it held her up whilst simultaneously strangling her.

"Come on man, she's done nothing to you! Please, let her go!"

" _I've seen inside your heart, you care for this person. Yet you try to burying that feeling, believing yourself too tainted to ever deserve happiness, you're too deeply set in this crusade. You think that you don't deserve a future, even though you act otherwise when in the presence of others._ "

Everything the Spirit was saying was true, he did think all those things, and apparently so did Daisy. "Yeah, it's true, I do think those things, what does it have to do with Daisy?! Why won't you let her go?!"

Mere moments after he said that, she gasped out a single word.

" _... why…_ "

" _Because you're weak._ " It told them both, watching curiously as she drew short on air, beginning to lose the fight for survival.

" _Your strength is an illusion, it comes purely from what you were given. You are not a warrior, you are like a weary soldier, fighting so that you don't have to fight again._ "

With no indication on pain, Mack's flesh burned away, revealing the Rider that went silent due to its now inability to talk. Truly fearful for her life, Robbie pleaded with the Spirit once more, this time fully beseeching to it.

"Please! Let her go! You'll kill her!"

He glanced at her face, which was warped with starvation of precious oxygen. Then he saw the power of the Ghost Rider beginning to flow into her. It was going to try her body next!

"Don't possess her too! Please, anyone but her! I'll beg, if that's what you want! **Not! Her!** "

It still didn't release her. Her hand that had been scrabbling against his skeletal gloved one fell slack to her side, and her eyes slowly rolled back as she began to lose consciousness despite her struggle. There was a fiery orange glow under her skin on her upper torso and face as the Spirit of Vengeance probed her, finding her body suitable.

Her flesh burnt off, revealing her skeleton beneath, engulfed in the devil's fire. She was becoming the Ghost Rider! He prayed Gabe and Daisy would forgive him, and stood in front of the thing that had been inside him not so long ago.

"You're right, I won't survive this without you, but the truth is you need me too!"

It snorted, as if laughing at his statement.

"We had a deal! How about a new one? Give me my vengeance on Eli, settle my score, and I'll settle yours. All of yours! Just let Daisy go."

Just before her lungs would have collapsed, it dropped her, and her burnt away flesh instantly grew back. Robbie fell to his knees beside her, forgetting for a moment that he couldn't touch her. He tried to lift her head, but his hand passed through it. Remembering his state as he felt the pull that was dragging him done grow stronger than ever, he took his hand back.

She was barely conscious, which he discovered when her eyes rolled in their sockets to gaze up through him at the Rider. He let out a sigh of relief.

He felt the Ghost Rider clamp its hand on his shoulder, and the Spirit of Vengeance return to him. Mack fell to the ground, back to normal, and the soulless man stood.

"Sorry Daisy, but I had to make this deal."

And then, he changed, becoming the Ghost Rider once more.

* * *

The moment he saw her, Mack scrambled over to Daisy and sat her up, holding onto her. "Oh my God! Daisy, are you okay?!"

It took her a large amount of gasping and heaving to regain her ability to speak, and even then it was a rasp. She barely managed two words before she went back to gasping for air.

"… _What… happened…_ "

"That thing… Robbie… he took it back… oh God, I strangled you!"

" _It wasn't you._ " She managed.

"This is how Robbie must feel after the other guy does something he regrets when he gets his body back." He commented regretfully, patting her back. "I can't believe I strangled you."

" _You okay? You said you were in pain?_ "

"It's okay, that thing just dug up every painful memory I have, I'll be okay soon."

" _I know._ " Lincoln's face flashed before her eyes.

She wiped the tears before the big guy could see them. She didn't want his sympathy, or his condolences. " _Believe me I know._ "

Once she recovered her ability to breath fully, Daisy made her way to the Charger. When she saw it, she also saw the nasty series of scratches on the right side.

"Robbie's gonna kill me."

* * *

Pulling up on the motorcycle , the figure dismounted outside the warehouse.

" _So this is where it was last in control._ " The person clenched their gloved hand into a fist and stared at a burn mark on the ground.

" _I'm coming for you Ghost Rider._ "

* * *

Gazing down at the small picture of Lincoln and herself, Daisy held back tears that threatened to become real. When the Spirit of Vengeance had attempted to take her body after Mack's, it had dug up every single pain she'd ever felt. That included her heartbreak over Lincoln's death, in fact it was the main one that was haunting her right now, and she wished it would just go away.

The moment the evil power first entered her body, she'd relived every pain as if she were there again, feeling the feelings, thinking the thoughts and shedding the tears. She'd hardly been able to drive back safely, she was shaking so much, and immediately sought isolation.

If that was what Robbie lived with every day, she didn't know how he did it. To relive every loss, feel every heartbreak each time he called on the Rider's power, she knew he had his own share of torment in the past, but she couldn't figure out how he did it, survived the pain that held him to the mistakes he'd made and the losses he'd suffered. It was just as if it tortured a host every moment it was present, forcing them to go through the awful things they'd experienced in their life, as if they were what sustained it,

She remembered a bolt striking her in the chest, a blunt impact, her back crashing on the ramp before she fell out of the Quinjet and back into the Zephyr. Then, rushing to the radio, finding out he'd stolen the necklace from her. Then she was telling him she couldn't take it if he died, that it wasn't right for him to die in her place. But he stuck with his decision, telling her that saving the girl he loved and the world felt right. Then, knowing he was gone, Hive too.

She was sitting in the room in the Playground within which Radcliffe's android Aida had constructed a portal that brought Coulson and Fitz back from wherever they'd been stuck, and where Robbie presumably was right now. She didn't know why, but this was where she felt she should be.

"I miss you… but you're never coming back. I'm sorry, but it's time for me to move on, I've been living in the past too long." She told the picture.

She pulled a Zippo lighter from her jeans and flicked it open. Sparking the gas alight, she set the picture on fire. When the fire crawled close to her fingers, she dropped it, watching the capture of a time when she was happier curl up, blackening before turning to ash.

"Goodbye Lincoln."

It finished burning, and she put the lighter away. She closed her eyes.

A moment later, an orange light shone over her eyelids, and she heard cries of exhaustion from a voice she knew and had come to trust. She opened her brown orbs to see Robbie Reyes on all fours before of her as she moved to kneel right in front of him. He noticed her movement when he opened his eyes to see her knees in the top of his vision.

He looked up in time to catch a glimpse of her short hair as she pulled him into a hug that anyone else would have sworn she'd be trying to break their neck. He returned it, standing up slowly due to his lack of energy, pulling her up with him.

"I knew you'd come back." She spoke loud enough for only him to hear her. "And I know you're not alone."


	8. Penance

Placing his hand on the Charger, Robbie sent a quick pulse of hellish power into it. As if by magic, the mortifying scratches on the right side caused by Daisy's pursuit of the Spirit of Vengeance when it went rogue were washed away, and it looked as if it was brand new all over again.

"You're never driving my car again." He told her with a smile.

Daisy looked genuinely surprised that he knew that had been her. "I thought I told Gabe not to tell you about that?"

"He didn't need to, I was in the car for the whole chase."

"Ah." She winced. "Sorry?"

Taking her gently by the arms, he spoke in a more somber voice, showing that the other worldly experience had still left its mark on him despite his cheerfulness. His eyes expressed the depth of what he'd endured, she knew because she had that same look in her own eyes, the same spark of grim determination that pushed her through the hard times, the good and the bad.

"I know you hate this question, but are you okay?"

She gave a small shake of her head. "I'm getting there. It's just painful memories."

"Come here." Robbie pulled her into a hug that she didn't want to admit she needed. Putting her head under his chin, Daisy relaxed as her arms wrapped around his back. She didn't know how long she let him hold her, but it was one of the far more positive feelings she'd felt in a while.

But, like all good things, it had to end. Mutually, they let go, and a few moments of comfortable silence later, Coulson called for them over the intercom.

"Alright, here's the situation. Eli Morrow is down in this Chinatown base…" The amputee leader identified the site on the table screen as he mentioned it. "And he's doing something with his powers that's causing quakes. We need to know what it is, how to stop it, and to bring him in or take him down. Robbie, Ghost Rider is our biggest asset in this operation, if things go sideways you're invincible in your Rider form. Daisy and Yo-Yo will be joining you, you three are the strike team. Fitz and Simmons will monitor from up here, and there will be two teams on standby. Gear up."

The enhanced trio left the control room and got ready, the two women changing into their respective suits. Daisy pulled on her new gauntlets, then pulled the host of the Spirit of Vengeance aside.

"Do you think you can do it? Kill your uncle, I mean." She asked.

He shrugged. "If I can't, the other guy definitely can. No matter what, Eli _is_ going to pay for his sins, and I'll be there to make sure he knows what he's done."

They boarded the Quinjet, which took them to the mission site. There, they spread out, checking a side each whilst the fourth was watched from above by the pilots in the jet that had dropped them off. All of the Chinatown Crew were inside, which couldn't be good. They joined back up, and located the nearest entry point.

"Here comes burning man." Yo-Yo told her. Looking up to see the soulless man, Daisy inquired,

"Any life on your side?"

He shook his head. "Dead as a graveyard. Is Eli even in there?"

" _Let's find out, assault team, you have a go._ " Coulson consented.

Daisy took the door handle as Yo-Yo covered her, and Robbie stood ready for anything that might come out, the Spirit of Vengeance ready to change his form in an instant. She opened the door, to find nothing within but a dark corridor.

"Looks all clear to me." The male of the group stated, then his expression darkened. "Which means it isn't."

"I heard something. Water, running." Yo-Yo noted.

"Could you do a little recon up ahead?"

"That depends. If recon means take a look around…"

The shockwave Inhuman gave the speed gifted woman a 'you know what I meant' look, and she zipped off down the corridor. Not even ten seconds later an explosion of fire followed the speedster out, and her arm was on fire. Daisy grabbed a nearby blanket and smothered the flames on the other woman's arm, while the tank of the team cracked his neck with a serious and damning expression.

"Robbie."

He looked back at her, catching her concerned look.

"Be careful alright?"

"I will." He replied, then turned to the flaming corridor. "You want to play with fire Eli, let's play."

He strode into the building, immune to the raging flames, moving through them as if they were air, not even having a problem with the smoke. He emerged on the other side of the inferno, ready to bust some heads. The first of Eli's men he met was quickly dispatched, having his head smashed into a wall.

He easily took apart the rest, and made his way through to the main chamber. It was a large, shadowed and open space, and at the end of the room was a gigantic cube.

Approaching it, he stepped inside cautiously, conscious of the off and on of the orange light the inside emitted. At the back, he saw what looked to be a hatch raised away from something in the back wall. Just as he was about to get a closer look, he heard it.

Eli's voice.

"Robbie? What are you doing here? You should go home, get safe. Please."

"I will." He promised. "But first, you have to die."

He called on the evil inside himself, but for some reason it struggled to emerge, his transformation as slow as a tortoise. That slowness allowed his uncle to cause a massive stalagmite of carbon to pierce through the right side of his chest. The change stopped, and he cried out in pain, grasping the thing that had speared him through from behind.

"I guess I'm not the only one with a secret. Between the radioactive plutonium, the quantum energies bombarding you and the carbon spike, a normal person would have been dead ten times over, but I guess you're not normal are you?"

"Come closer, I'll show you what I am." He dared his uncle.

Eli began to pace. "I heard stories in prison, whispers of a demon, the Ghost Rider. My own nephew? How?"

"The night of the Fifth Street attack. When I hit the street after being thrown from the car, I died. In the darkness, I made a deal with the devil, I bargained my soul and my service for Gabe to be spared and my vengeance on the ones responsible. I died, and my little brother was paralyzed, because they were trying to kill you."

"It was the Bauers, Joseph and Lucy. They started this, they lied!" His uncle tried to convince him, but he knew the truth now.

"I know! The Darkhold drove them mad, just like it has you! You think I give a rat's ass about any of that?! A bunch of scientists fight over a stupid book?! All the killing! The bodies! The lives destroyed!"

"I never meant for any of this to happen Robbie." Eli told him. "I never wanted to hurt you."

"It's far too late for that now. We trusted you _tío_ , Gabe and me. We loved you like a father, and you tore it all apart. And now… you're unworthy of the loved ones you've betrayed!"

"I know."

"Why'd you do it? Become a killer?"

"I guess it runs in the family." The older man sneered.

"You had a PHD… you had us… you had a good job…"

"A good job? Those idiots at Momentum looked at me like they were doing me a favour! Like they were better! Like they were smarter! The condescension in their eyes… They got what they deserved."

"You had to get vengeance…" He tried to guess.

Eli shook his head. "Not vengeance. Respect! You have no idea how hard I worked every day of my life, to claw my way into that door! Sure, I made mistakes like any kid! And I paid for them! It didn't matter, from high school to grad school, _**no one**_ believed in me! They thought I was cheating! They thought I wasn't capable! Shut me out! Well guess what? Guess what I'm capable of now?!

"I can create a city out of nothing. Or, I can cover it in volcanic rock. Robbie, I'm becoming a god!"

"You better be. Because the Devil is coming for you!"

He tried for his transformation again, and it came quicker this time, even though he had to put his all into it. But, like before, it wasn't fast enough, and a second spike pierced through his lower left stomach. He cried out again, but they quickly died.

"Remember, I gave you a chance to leave. Whatever happens next, it's on you."

* * *

Slipping into the room, Daisy hid behind a pillar as the thugs brought Coulson in. Planting her hands on the shaking ground, she made herself into a vessel for the vibrations. This would hurt like hell, and probably wreak havoc on her bones, but it would buy enough time for Aida and the team below.

"... You're not creating things out of nothing, you're drawing on the quantum energy from the Dark Dimension. It doesn't belong here, and it sure as hell doesn't belong to you, thus, thief!"

"You're lying." Eli snarled.

"No, it gets worse. Every time you steal quantum energy, it creates a seismic rift. The more you take, the bigger the quake, which causes a problem because you know, plutonium!"

"Listen to him _tío_." She heard Robbie's voice. It sounded weak, like he didn't have much strength left. "You don't want to drag them down with you."

Eli looked at him where he was trapped in the Quantum Battery, then back at Coulson. "You know how hard I had to work to get here? To achieve what I've achieved?! And you call me a thief? A fraud?"

"Eli wake up. Don't you see what's happening? Don't let your ego blind you to the truth!"

"What you called truth Agent Coulson, I call theory."

"That bomb goes off, everybody dies, you included!"

"You're wrong!" Eli snapped. "The Darkhold has shown me the way. I can create life, even after death. Can a petty thief do that, huh?"

"That bomb's not a failsafe… it's your endgame." Coulson realised.

"It's not my end. It's yours."

The former director then spoke to the rest of the team through his hidden com. "Uh, guys? We gotta go."

Yet another quake hit, and Daisy drew it into herself, feeling the weakening off her bones, and the waning of her strength.

* * *

"Robbie, I need you to fight, get out of that box!" Coulson told him. Through the pain of the twin spikes that ran him through, he was able to nod.

The man then turned, and said, "All teams, go hot!"

The agents burst into action out of nowhere, and he caught Daisy enter then fall on the floor at the back of the room, doing her best to absorb the quakes caused by his uncle. She was in pain, just like when he'd first encountered her. For some reason it made him angrier than he'd ever been. Anger that he chose to use.

"We have a deal…" He rasped, locking on to Eli as the man turned to face him. "... Now let's finish it."

The Spirit of Vengeance roared from within him as it tried to burn his flesh away for the third time, but barely revealing patches of his skeleton. The sound unleashed was terrifying. One foot slowly after the other, Robbie walked away from the back of the Quantum Battery as Eli was pulled into the box by the magnet Yo-Yo slapped on him with her super speed.

The ground rocked as the portal below began to power up to take the plutonium away. The quantum energy manipulating man made to escape the box after the magnet was off him. Unacceptable.

The soulless man seized him by the collar and brought his uncle before him, his eyes burning with the power of the devil.

"Look into my eyes…"

And so the older man did, fear in his as he shook in his nephew's grasp. But, Robbie would not let go. It was time for Eli Morrow to pay for his sins, and he didn't need the Rider to have the will to do it.

"Your soul is stained by the blood of the innocent… Feel their pain!"

The man began to scream as he slowly burned, not aware of anything else. As he screamed, the host to the Spirit of Vengeance fully unleashed it, changing full into Ghost Rider state. It clung on to Eli, to ensure he felt the full force of the suffering and pain he'd caused was reflected upon him.

"Robbie, get out of there!" Coulson yelled at the burning avatar. He was ignored.

The portal was ready to go, and the quakes were running rampant despite Daisy's best efforts. Everything was shaking.

The supports on the lid fell, and it slammed closed. The orange interior of the box turned white as the plutonium began to go nuclear. But still the Ghost Rider wouldn't let go of Eli Morrow. It was determined to burn him to death for his sins.

Staggering to her feet, Daisy called out weakly but loud enough. "Robbie…"

Robbie seemed to hear her, as the Rider glanced to her for a moment. She fell to her knees, still absorbing the shock waves.

"Don't let the devil win… he has your soul… don't let him take your spirit too…"

The fire intensified.

As she collapsed, Daisy said one last thing to Robbie.

" _Please…_ "

Eli found himself being hurled into the back corner of the box as the Ghost Rider roared deafeningly, drowning out even the quakes themselves. Eli Morrow would burn either way, it needn't go with him.

Seizing the carbon spikes that protruded from its chest, the Rider snapped them with a new fury, one it'd never had before.

They fell to the floor, clattering loudly as the last of the spires exited its back and the devil's bounty hunter leapt from the giant cube mere moments before it vanished due to the portal. It landed in a heap of flame animated bones and clothes.

The quakes stopped, and the Ghost Rider rose to its feet, striding swiftly across the room to the fallen woman called 'Quake' by those who feared her.

Contradicting its fierce appearance, it gathered her up in its arms and made out of the door to the world. Sprinting onto the roof, into the sun, it held the woman close to its leather jacket clad chest. Barely conscious, Daisy unleashed all of the vibrational energy from her body at once, disturbing the very air. However she wasn't able to throw the avatar with the skull on fire off its balance. It held her the entire time, one arm under her arms, the other under her legs, bridal style.

Her body no longer dealing with energy wracking her bones, she fell limp in the Rider's arms. Her brown eyes met the glowing orange ones of the burning skeleton of a man holding her securely.

" _You let go…_ "

The Spirit of Vengeance subsided, allowing Robbie control over his transformed body. He held her closer.

Then the press came over, swarming the pair from the ground below the roof. The Rider began to glare down at them, Daisy in its arms. It struck a menacing figure, staring down at the press with purpose in its glowing eyes and fury burning from the cracks in its skull.

" _Quake! Have you been here the whole time?_ "

" _Who is this other Inhuman with you?_ "

" _Were you the cause of these quakes?_ "

" _Alright, calm down people._ " Mace walked onto the scene in his combat gear. " _Miss Johnson was not responsible for these quakes, in fact she was the one reducing their impact at the risk of her own life._ "

" _What about the burning man?_ " A reporter asked as the aforementioned Rider took 'Quake' away from the edge of the roof.

" _Vengeance is a powerful thing, just like compassion. Which drove the Ghost Rider today is unclear, but he saved many lives today by taking one. Without him, we wouldn't have been able to pull this operation off, and we're grateful he was here._ " The director professed.

Away from everyone else, Robbie's flesh crawled back over his extinguished skeleton until he was human again. He looked down at her, brown eyes meeting brown.

"Why'd you let go of your vengeance on your uncle?" She found herself asking.

"The other guy found your life more important than cementing Eli's punishment. I guess even a spirit of hell feels the need to protect and ensure the safety of the innocent above punishing the guilty." The older Reyes replied. "Plus, he hates being in the Dark Dimension because it's a pain to break out of. I do know one thing for sure though."

"And what's that tough guy?"

He smiled.

"I'm glad he let go of Eli, because I'd hate to have to be separated from you again."

Trying her best to shift into a more upright position in his arms, she smiled too, managing to link her arms around his neck. "Aw, I'm touched. You didn't want to be separated from little ol' me."

"You're the only person other than Gabe who can bring me back from the Rider. That makes you special. And I'd never become so consumed by it that I'd leave you."

"I could kiss you right now." She told him honestly.

The host of the Spirit of Vengeance raised an eyebrow. "You sure you can handle this heat _chica_?"

"Robbie?"

"Yeah?"

"Just kiss me already."

Robbie happily obliged her, leaning down the short distance between their faces and meeting Daisy halfway, both their eyes closed as he held her in his arms in the face of the sunset. It was the best feeling for both of them, so they enjoyed it, the peaceful moment of privacy on the roof.

The pair pulled back slowly, opening their eyes.

"I wish this moment could last forever." She sighed, content to be held up instead of falling on her face should she try to walk. He smiled, pulling her a little closer to his fully healed chest, even his jacket restored.

"Me too."


	9. Shadowed

Shutting the boot of the Charger, Daisy opened the passenger door and got in. Closing it after she sat down in the seat she'd been riding in for weeks, she saw Coulson lean down to the window.

"You sure you won't stay?"

She shook her head. "I need to move on, and I don't think I can do that in S.H.I.E.L.D. I might come back if I'm needed though."

"Well, good luck. We'll miss you, so stay safe." The former director told her. He then looked up at Robbie, who was in the driver's seat. "Don't make me hunt you down."

"Okay _Dad_."

Her comment made him smile, as much as he seemed to find it perplexing that she referred to him as such. As everyone waved, they drove out of the Zephyr, and onto an airstrip where it had landed. They exited into the uninhabited area of California, and from there, they just drove.

"Where are we going?" She asked.

"Back to LA, if you don't mind that is?"

Lightly punching him in the shoulder, Daisy laughed. "You can say if you want to go home. I'm sure Gabe's missed you."

"Fine, I want to go home." Robbie grinned. "You?"

"Do you see me getting out of this car? I'm staying with you."

* * *

Parking the motorcycle, the figure dismounted and strode into the building. There it found traces of a fire in one of the corridors. Caesium, if it wasn't mistaken, ignited by water which had been splashed by a step most likely. In the main room, supported by pillars and was as tall as it was long, was the traces of a battle. Blood, bullet casings, dents in a couple of the supports, bullet holes in the floor.

On the floor near the end of the large room was what it was looking for. A puddle of blood, that to it was tainted by the devil. Kneeling down, it dragged two fingers through the slick substance.

" _You're careless, Rider, you were wounded before you could transform. Despite being possessed for 5 years, you seem ignorant of many things._ " It noted.

Drawing a pentagram in a circle with the blood on the floor, it pressed its hand to it and searched with its own power. Images flashed by in its vision, one man surrounded by few others. Then it knew his name.

" _Robbie Reyes… Ghost Rider, the weakest yet, but also the strongest. I know your name and I know your face now. I am coming for you, and you will not escape me._ "

Striding out of the Chinatown headquarters, the figure mounted its motorcycle and kicked it into gear, driving off with the front wheel off the ground for a moment, wheelieing. It knew where to go now, and it wouldn't fail.

* * *

"Come on!" She exclaimed, hitting him lightly on the chest. "You've never been out clubbing?"

"I was doing street races and looking after Gabe, I didn't have time." He shrugged.

"Okay, that's it. You _are_ coming out tonight, we're going to Exchange LA and we are going to dance and drink until stupid o'clock am, we're both going to regret it in the morning, and we're going to love it."

He rubbed the back of his head. "Gabe…"

"Oh no, you're not getting out of this one." His brother told him with a grin as he rolled into the room.

"I can take care of myself for a night, you go have fun."

Accepting he now had no way out of Daisy's madness, Robbie went upstairs and changed into club-suitable clothes according to her dictatorship. He ended up wearing dark jeans, a light grey t-shirt, a black leather jacket that didn't have the white lines his other one did on and a pair of dark blue and white sneakers. Then it was her turn.

For about an hour, he was chilling downstair with Gabe, then she came down. And his jaw dropped.

She was wearing a black and gold sequin bodycon party romper with matching heels. She'd done nothing with her hair, except maybe drag a brush through it, a little lip gloss and some faint black eye shadow. But, she looked _amazing_.

"Wow…" Was all he could manage.

He was barely aware of Gabe shoving out of his seat and to his feet, since he was already at the door before he knew it, grabbing his keys. Daisy put on her own jacket and in what seemed to be a blur, they got out the door and walked there with her giving directions. Not so much that he didn't know where to go, he'd been past it a couple times, but because he was fine with being told what to do for tonight. The other guy was silent, and he had no objections except he'd never done this before, but apparently she had.

Arriving the club, he let himself be led into the building that he'd seen a few times, showing his driver's license on the way in to be allowed entry. It was a complete assault on his senses, lights flashing, booming music and the smell of alcohol.

Above the roaring of those on the four levels, Ariana Grande's One Last Time was still audible. His Inhuman friend/love interest kept hold of his arm so he didn't get lost in the crowd and pulled him to the bar, which was a welcome relief from the madness of people dancing all over the place. To him this was madness, but she looked just as comfortable as she'd ever been.

"Baby's First Bourbon and a Martini."

Even in the racket of this place of dancing and drinking, Daisy's voice carried to the bartender easily without having to be raised. Within moments, the two drinks were on the counter and she handed the former to him.

"Baby's First Bourbon?"

"A beginner's drink, start off the night steady." She explained, taking her own Martini and sipping it. "You don't get wasted until you're at least an hour and a half into the night."

Robbie raised an eyebrow. "Then what're you doing with one of those already?"

"Unlike you, this used to be my every Friday and Saturday night before I joined up with Coulson. I'm an experienced young woman." She jibed.

"Party animal much?"

"You've seen nothing yet."

The pair finished their drinks at a sensible pace, then at her insistence, joined the rave. Pretty Little Psycho came on, and he heard the opening lyrics as the club went slightly quieter.

 _Oh, oh, oh,  
Oh here we go  
Walking talking like you know I want your pretty little psycho…_

The soulless man took a quick look around, got a rough idea of how to dance to this particular song, then joined Daisy in moving to the beat. He felt stupid at first, like he had no idea what he was doing, but as the alcohol began to affect him, he stopped worrying, and actually began to have a good time. All that time spent fighting with the Hellfire Chain had a positive effect on his movements, they were fluid, and not forced like some other's.

Not even half an hour in, he didn't even care what songs were thrown into the mix by the DJ at the front, up on the stage, he just moved. The short asian woman disappeared for a few seconds, but quickly reappeared. He didn't question it.

Stay The Night was the next one he recognised, and it was halfway into it by the time he did given he was so focused on not getting caught up in the crowd and staying with the ex agent so he didn't get lost. Before he knew it, Eminem's The Monster was blaring and the dance pattern changed.

 _I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed_

 _Get along with the voices inside of my head_

He didn't know when, but they pulled away from the madness and went up to the second level, getting another drink. This time, he was allowed to chose his own, although she did give him the choice between the ones he could handle. He didn't mind, she knew this stuff.

As they went to the railing and rejoined the party, they both failed to notice the figure in full black on the fourth level who was observing them. They were having too much fun to even really care to look around to see if they were being watched. Luckily for them, observing was the only thing the dark figure did all night, even as they moved freely between floors, going where the beat took them with a drink in one hand and more often than not, a motion in their entire bodies.

Back down on the lowest level, the main dance floor, Daisy was well aware Robbie had lost track of how many drinks he'd had. She hadn't. He'd had the original bourbon, a Club Soda with whisky in, two Tequilas and a Scotch he'd just finished. She'd had the same number but she was an experienced partygoer, so she had a higher tolerance for it and wasn't what she considered 'drunk'.

Probably against her better judgement she let him get one more drink, the Devil's Poison, which was sure to give him a hangover. Then they paid, and left, her collecting her jacket on the way out and making sure both their leather tops were done up to prevent the cold.

It was a good thing they hadn't driven to the club, because neither were in a state to drive and she would admit it if told or asked. So, she called a cab, they got in and it drove them to the street home was on. She didn't realise how nice it felt to have a home until now. They got out, and she paid the cabbie probably a little too much but she could keep the change for being so nice.

Taking Robbie by the arm, she managed to lead him up the small path to the house. It took a minute or two for him to get the key in the door. They entered as quietly as possible so that they didn't wake the college kid who slept downstairs. She guessed stairs were not quite beyond him so she watched him carefully as he made his drunken way up them. She was also familiar with which room was his now, so directed him into it. Now the fun part.

Getting him to bed.

He changed clumsily into his nightclothes then stumbled his way into bed. Daisy grabbed him a glass of water, which he drank when she gave it to him.

"Drink lots of water when you get up." She advised.

"Ok.

She got up, and was about to go when she heard him say, "Thanks for tonight, it was great."

"You're welcome. You needed a good night out without delivering vengeance."

"Drunk Ghost Rider…" He laughed quietly, hiccuping as he did. "That'd be bad."

She opened the door then stopped as she heard him speak one more time. What he said surprised her but also made her feel really _happy_ when she heard it.

"You're beautiful, you know that?"

"Thanks, you're pretty darn cute yourself." She replied. Then she closed the door and went to the spare room that had served as hers when she was here before. Getting ready for bed was a bit of a chore, but she managed to rescue herself from her heels and romper, putting them on the chair in the corner. Then she curled up and went to sleep.

All in all, a great night.

* * *

When Robbie woke the next day, he had a headache from hell, and felt sick, dizzy, sleepy, confused and thirsty all at the same time. The first thing he did? Crawled out of bed and dragged himself downstairs, barely on his feet.

Propping himself up on the counter, and drew a cup of water which he drained in one. Then another.

"Morning Robbie."

His brother's seemingly deafening call made his head ring with an agonising resonance. He clutched his ears, barely able to see Gabe look at him with something between awe and amazement.

"Dude…" The younger Reyes exclaimed extra quietly. "You have a hangover!"

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed." He groaned a little snappily. When he recovered enough of his awareness, he asked his little brother,

"We got any aspirins?"

"Third from the fridge." The paraplegic replied helpfully, tapping the drawer as he rolled past, going about his regular Saturday morning routine. Robbie found the painkillers and took what he could safely, replacing them in the drawer and gladly taking whatever food Gabe put in front of him, which happened to be a bowl of Cookie Crisp. Weekend cereal.

Not even questioning the choice of breakfast his brother had, he picked up his spoon and ate it. He was a third of the way through the mini cookies in the bowl when Daisy came down, seemingly without a hangover.

"Well look at you, eating Cookie Crisp for breakfast. What are you, 12?"

"I could be 40 and I wouldn't care. It's food." He replied, wincing slightly at the volume of her voice.

She shrugged. "Fair enough."

After breakfast, Robbie remembered he'd not shown up to work for weeks. Gabe then told him he'd been given an alibi by S.H.I.E.L.D which Canelo had accepted, and was waiting for him to 'come back from a police investigation after being a witness'. Whoever was running the excuses division was crushing it, since he could go back to Canelo's Auto And Body with no questions asked.

Grabbing his keys, he made for the Charger to make his long-overdue reappearance at the garage. Just as he was about to unlock the car, his keys were quaked out of his hand and into the air. The Inhuman responsible caught them and shrugged.

"What? You're not fit to drive until tomorrow at least."

"I said you were never driving my baby again." He reminded her, gritting his teeth for a moment against the headache.

Putting her hands on her hips, she gave him 'the look'. "Who's going to drive then? You? I don't think you could make it there without an accident. Gabe, he can't drive."

There was no flaw in her logic that he could see. Reluctantly, he went around the passenger side and got it after Daisy unlocked the car. Much more carefully than when she chased the Spirit of Vengeance, she reversed it out into the street then drove off on the route to his workplace.

Arriving, the pair were greeted by the humble shop that he'd been at more or less since he dropped out of school. It was far too bright outside so he grabbed a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment and got out.

"Hey."

Robbie looked back at her, now able to see her face given the sun no longer blinded him. She was leaning on the open door on her side lightly. Rounding the car, he leaned over the door and kissed her, knowing he wasn't going to get away with going to work to escape her apparent need for PDP. In the background he could hear Canelo cheering, and he felt her lips curl into a smile as he pulled back, one he saw as he headed into the building, thankful for the semi-darkness of the interior.

" _Buenos días_ _Robbie_ , finally hit the party circuit after getting released from the _chico de azul_ did you?" His boss inquired, wrapping his arm around the soulless young man's shoulders.

"How'd you guess?"

"You show up to work wearing sunglasses, kissing your _ex novia_ goodbye after she drove you here in your own car, and you flinch at every loud sound." The kind man explained, gesturing to the ceiling. "You have your first hangover Robbie, it's all over you."

He went to get changed into his work overalls, and Canelo asked, "Is she still your ex, or are you _de nuevo juntos?_ "

"Not sure if we're going to, but I'd rather take each day at a time. I'm not sure what we are right down." He replied, getting back into the routine of the past 6 years that he knew even while hungover.

"You can't rush love, it gets messy if you do. And secrets are bad, lead to disaster."

"Believe me, I think we're working through those safely."

* * *

Pulling up outside the Auto and Body shop, the black clad figure saw through the walls to find the human form of the Ghost Rider weakened and hung over from the party night it'd shadowed him at the previous night. It wasn't yet time, it still needed to prepare for its meeting with both entities in that body.

"Not yet Robbie Reyes. You haven't yet experienced the full depth of what your deal with the devil had done to you. I will tear you down, so that you can see the truth, you don't know the fate you brought upon yourself in becoming the Ghost Rider. I'll show you… the true face of Mephistopheles."


	10. Choices

Shielding his eyes as the Quinjet descended and the ramp opened, Daisy looked to Robbie who was beside her. "You sure you wanna do this?"

"Relax, I'll sort out the other guy, then I'll join you at the Playground. This is the closest evil activity it can sense to it, so I'll be there pretty quick after he finishes up with these guys. I'll be fine." He told her calmly. Disembarking the aircraft, he waited until it released the Charger from its underbelly. Then it flew off, with her in it.

Getting in his car, he drove to the warehouse where he knew those who'd spilt innocent blood were due to the Spirit of Vengeance. As he got within seeing distance, he turned the vehicle into the Hell Charger, igniting the engine and wheels.

So surprised were they to see him, they didn't even reach for their weapons. Inside the now parked car, he changed, becoming the devil's bounty hunter once more. It stepped out.

Regarding what seemed to be drug dealers, it snarled, grasping the chain around its chest and pulling loose. The links fell from the air, and a fiery glow encompassed them, transforming the ordinary chain into the true form of the Hellfire Chain. It now had an actual handle, with a curving spike like a scythe blade, 2 inches long, and bladed links making up the last third, ending with a bullet-like spike.

They were all deserving of death, so it went to work with the chain. The now even more deadly metal sliced and blazed through their ranks, killing the 11 in the building within a minute.

Then it swung the chain diagonally down and across to the right. It wrapped around its chest, and it let go of the handle, letting it hang from its waist. It immediately headed for the door, stalking across the concrete with swift, purposeful strides.

The Ghost Rider stopped in its tracks, hearing the clink of a chain. Turning around, it saw a shadowed figure, and felt a presence so familiar and detestable. It left a holy aroma in the air that couldn't be smelt, repulsing the avatar of revenge. It had a pair of hook-ended chains, one dangling from each sleeve, and that presence…

Just as it realised what the figure was, it revealed itself.

Turquoise flames lit up a pure white skeleton, showing the previously shrouded figure to be an almost mirror image. Black jeans, black boots, a black leather jacket, black gloves, and a skeleton on fire, but the flames were an angelic light blue, as were its eyes. It grasped the chains that dangled two feet out of the sleeves of its jacket, and raised its right hand, pointing at it with its gloved skeletal finger.

" _Back to Hell._ "

The Spirit of Vengeance roared, seizing the chain around its own chest and ripping it free, then set it ablaze. With a snarl, it hurled the Hellfire Chain at him, gripping the handle as it bore down on the holy reflection.

In the blink of an eye, the blue flamed Rider extended the chain coming from its left sleeve and flicked it, deflecting the one coming at it, then did the same to the other one, copying the devil's bounty hunter, lashing out with the blue inflamed weapon. At the last moment, the Ghost Rider flicked his own chain up and redirected it, sending it over its head.

" _Looks like you kept your chain skills._ " The holy Rider remarked in its echoing voice.

* * *

Exiting the jet, Daisy found herself greeted by Mack. "Hey big guy, been a while."

"Too long." He agreed, taking her into a hug. "You really scare everyone when you run off or disappear, you know that?"

With her now more commonplace cheeky smile, she shrugged it off and went through to the office of the big man himself, the director. Mace looked up from his desk as she came in, greeting her cheerfully.

"Good evening Miss Johnson."

"Not to be rude, but this feels like every time I got called into the principal's office."

The suited man chuckled, standing from his chair with a smile.

"Well you're not in trouble for hacking the school network or trolling the internet in class for a laptop better than the one you have, so you can rest easy." He told her, appreciating the humour apparently .

Swinging her arms as a way to relieve her nerves from being back in the building, she looked around. "So, uh, what am I doing here again?"

"Oh, right. Okay, all you have to do is inspect all the facilities, then greet the visiting Inhumans when they arrive tomorrow, be nice and not scare them. I thought it would be a good idea to have them greeted by one of us who isn't under scrutiny from any higher ups, and what says 'no strings on me' like Quake being the one to usher them in the door?"

"Wow." She raised her eyebrows for a moment. "Sounds like you had to stay up quite a few nights to handle this right and without worries."

"I try to keep a regular sleep schedule, but that's about right." He acknowledged with the smile still in place.

He handed her a tablet, then gave her the go ahead to do what she went there to do and have free roam about the base with no questions asked. And so she did.

Going through the base was like revisiting a childhood home, full of memories and places she recognised, but also new additions that were completely unknown to her. Each room had at least a couple new things, whether it was something had been moved, or there was a new thing in the place. The sweep of the base was mostly uneventful, except for the occasional run in with someone she recognised.

Heading into the containment room for enhanced individuals, she looked up from the screen, and nearly dropped it. Not in surprise, but horror.

In front of her were dozens of… her. They were in ranks like soldiers, motionless on their feet. All they wore was the same undergarments as her, and they seemed lifeless. She poked one in the cheek, and the flesh felt scarily like real flesh. Pulling the same one's eyelid up, she saw a perfect copy of her own brown irises.

Then, she heard footsteps.

Hastily shedding her clothes, she became identical to the Daisy legion, then swapped herself out for one of them, pulling one of the second to back row's bra strap slightly down its shoulder. Then she froze in the same position as them, in the spot of the one she replaced.

Mack entered the room, cocking his shotgun. She could tell it was him by his footsteps, they were soft but heavy. The vibrations of his movement in the air danced across her skin, and she was able to form a sort of echolocation from it, gaining a sketchy map of the room. He approached the one whose top she'd messed with, probably reasoning that it was her. The moment he had his back to her, she struck.

A vibration blast erupted from her palm as she span, striking the big, dark man in the back. She felt no bones in him. Stealing his shotgun, she grabbed her shed clothes and the tablet then fled the room, locking it while he recovered.

Pulling on her jeans, top, socks and shoes as she moved, she found a storage cupboard and hid in it. Accessing the mainframe of the base in mere moments, Daisy pulled up the cameras of the Playground. On them, she saw Coulson shoot three agents dead when they discovered Fitz was an android too. Then he took out the cameras. Systematically , the visuals capture devices went offline in the base, either shut down or shot out.

Hyperventilating after the things she'd witnessed in the last few minutes, she turned the device off and set it aside. It took her a while, but she collected herself enough to make half a plan. Jemma was also on the run in the base, and she knew about the androids too. She had to find her, before it was too late.

* * *

The Ghost Rider ran along the beam, leaping over the chain swings of its opposite being, then unwrapped its own chain from its arm and lashed it around an offshoot of the beam it was on. Stepping off the support as it ran, the devil's favourite creation roared as it swung like Tarzan, seizing the other Rider by the neck and hurling it into a tangle of chains as it reached the climax of its swing.

Catching onto one of the outer ones, it snarled and send its power into the multitude of metal links. They came alive like snakes, binding the angelic burning skeleton so tight it couldn't move. It restrained, the devil's soul collector dropped to the floor, and walked away, lashing the Hellfire Chain around its chest.

It didn't hear the molten steel dripped to the ground, nor the soft impact of the other landing on its feet better than a cat. Not even the swish of the blazing blue chain through the air registered.

The chain imbued with angelic fire wrapped around its torso like a lasso, binding its arms to its sides. The holy aspect of the fire caused it to scream, writhing in the links.

It continued to scream as the other tightened the unbreaking bondage, approaching and retracting the weaponised metal back into its sleeve. The blue fire quadrupled in intensity and prominence. With one more increase in the holy power, the skeleton went out, and flesh slowly crawled back over the bones, covering the cracked skull that had never healed since the night it had occurred 5 years ago.

The soulless man cried out as the angelic Rider came in front of him, removing its glove and gripping his right shoulder with its skeletal left hand. He felt the shift in its power, and knew it was about to attempt to remove the Spirit of Vengeance from him, taking his own power with it and would leave him defenceless.

" _Mephistopheles has taken your soul and enslaved you, but I will remove the Spirit of Vengeance, give back what he took, and set you free._ " It told him, igniting its whole hand.

With all of the strength he could muster, Robbie inflamed the chain around his chest, repelling the one that bound him. Setting his gloved fist on fire, he punched it in the jaw, causing it to stumble back.

He gasped for air, almost closing his eyes at the pain the binding was causing him.

"Freedom's overrated."

Limping past it, he made for the Charger. He got the door open, then screamed as he felt the blazing chain lash around his left thigh. Looking back, he saw the angelic version of his alter ego gripping the burning metal links with only its right hand, noticed how it went all the way back into its sleeve. He knew one thing, it wouldn't let him go.

He had no idea how it happened, but a knife attached to a chain emerged from his sleeve, and it set ablaze. Not questioning it at the present moment, he swung at the blue fire imbued chain, then dragged himself into his car.

He immediately drove off at top speed, quickly disappearing into the streets. The knife chain was gone, and so was the burning blue one around his now badly bleeding leg.

When he got back to the Playground, he drove into the Zephyr, then physically _crawled_ out of the Hell Charger. Glancing back, he saw blood on the upholstery and groaned. "That'll take forever to get out."

He had to conserve the Rider's power so he could regenerate, so he'd fix the car later, and chose to make his way to the medbay. Staggering down the corridors seemed to take more strength than he had, but he still pressed on, and by the end of it, he was dragging himself along the floor. But even that wasn't enough.

"Help…"

He looked up to see Daisy fighting Mace, who was in his Patriot suit. He was strangling her, and she was unable to get him off, given she couldn't focus enough for her powers.

Like always, the anger of both him and the Spirit gave him enough strength to rise up to one foot and knee, and he lashed the chain around the director's neck, setting it ablaze. He released the young woman, but then Robbie felt a blazing inferno of agony from his torso and thigh, where the angelic Rider's chain had wounded him. He screamed again, collapsing from the additional pain that using his unholy powers had caused apparently.

Whatever the other Rider had done to him, it caused him unbelievable pain when any power of Hell was used. But, he couldn't worry about that now. He wrapped the chain around his chest once more in the same slinging motion and stood unsteadily. He had enhanced strength and durability as it was.

"What are you?" He asked Mace.

Daisy answered as she desperately caught her breath. "He's an android, created by Aida."

"That would explain why I can't see a soul."

The LMD Mace strode straight at him, and the soulless man managed to meet him blow for blow, barely. His wounds slowed him down, and the android managed to land a hit on his chest, causing complete agony to him. Thankfully the chain had absorbed the worst of the impact, but the already excruciating burning pain in his chest and leg was crippling to begin with.

A shockwave hit the ground, separating them, sending the artificial version of the director sent flipping. In mid air, it was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver by Daisy who'd enhanced her jump with a quake.

The ground met all three of them, but they managed to stand, him barely. The android rose one last time and he yelled, "DUCK!"

The chain sailed through the air again, ablaze once more, carving through the LMD's neck like a hot knife through butter, decapitating it. He coiled the chain up, then the cripplingly agony struck him. He screamed again as two gunshots rang out. He fell to his knees, then forwards, all the time clutching his chest. The female Inhuman caught him, whimpering at the bullets now embedded in her right shoulder and left leg. The replicas of Mack and Coulson entered the room, pistols raised.

"We didn't want to hurt you, but we have no choice here. Now let us download you before you bleed out."

"We'll save Robbie too, don't resist us." LMD Coulson told her. "We're in this together, we're a team."

Her eyes snapped open, and the vibrations she'd been building up in her hands under the cover of Robbie's body propped against hers were unleash in two opposite shockwaves. LMD Mack was shredded, and LMD Coulson sent flying.

Hoping they were both out of operation, she tried to get the soulless man to stand. He was unresponsive, in too much pain from whatever injuries he had to comprehend anything that's happened after he dropped the chain. Holding him upright with one hand, she held him back a bit, then cracked her palm across his face. He came back some, focusing on her face instead of what seemed to be torturing him.

"We gotta go. Like, now." She told him, grabbing the chain in her free hand. Then came the struggle that was standing both of them up.

Once they were on their feet, they limped towards the door Mack's replica had been sent out of when it was shredded. A group was there, Simmons leading them. She looked a little worse for wear but was in general okay.

"Anyone here know how to fly the Zephyr?"

One guy raised his hand.

"Well you're gonna try real hard. You guys drag everyone you can aboard the plane, start with the ones closest to the fire. Robbie and I can hardly walk, so Simmons you're gonna have to come with us."

The injured trio peeled off from the pack and went to the hangar. As they walked, or staggered might be a better word, Jemma asked, "I thought you said you weren't making a sacrifice play."

"LMD Mace fights better than the real one." She replied exhaustedly. "Robbie got here just in time to pull him off me."

A bullet punched the wall a mere foot from their heads. Hearing the sound, Robbie became more alert, enough to stand alone despite the pain. Balancing himself on his feet, he took the chain from her and let it drop to the ground, his bloody, gloved hand grasping the handle with all the strength he had.

"I'll take out these ones, you get that gear on board."

The two women tried to protest, but they knew he wouldn't back down as the LMD Fitz came around the corner with the LMD Coulson, who'd already recovered. They left him to face the androids, weapon in hand.

They rounded the corner to the entry for the hangar, only to find May's duplicate awake and sitting on four barrels of explosive material with a trigger in her hand. "Coulson, I have them."

"May… think about what you're doing." Daisy tried, attempting to talk to the duplicate of the one she considered a mother.

"I am. Or, processing I should say."

Jemma, tired beyond belief by the looks of it, tried too. "Please… do you want us to die?"

"Coulson says that doesn't matter."

"That doesn't sound like Coulson."

"Either way…" The duplicate of May looked down at the button trigger in her left hand. "I won't have to regret this decision."

* * *

"You can't win Robbie." The duplicate Coulson told him.

Fitz's doppelganger explained. "Your powers are linked to the pain you're in, if you use them it increases to the point where you're basically defenceless."

"I might not be able to use the powers of the demon in me…" He rasped, whipping the chain against the ground, the fire of the devil he could no longer use absent from it. "But my need to keep them safe… it's strong enough."

Before the duplicate of the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D could fully raise his gun, Robbie lashed out with the Hellfire Chain and caught the firearm. He wrenched it out of the android's hand, then swung the metal links back at it, aiming for its neck. The LMD Coulson caught it, and the other LMD raised an I.C.E.R pistol and fired.

The soulless man fell to his knees, his last thought one of apology. ' _I'm sorry guys, I did what I could… from here… it's up to you..._ '

"Get him in the Framework and send his body to the facility, I'll go get Daisy and Jemma and bring them to you to do the same. We should've used I.C. from the start." LMD Coulson told LMD Fitz.

"I did warn you."

The android former director took the stun pistol and marched to the hangar, where he found the door closing, May still sitting there. "I thought you said you had them."

She didn't answer.

"May… what did you do?"

"What I wanted to." She told him.

"Okay… Everything's under control, let's just…" He was interrupted by her.

"Whose control?"

Deciding a new course of action would be best, he proposed, "Why don't you and I have a glass of scotch, or manny, and talk this out like we always do."

She raised the trigger as he made to approach.

"We?" There was a broken look in her eyes, mechanical as they were. "We've never done that before."

There was a definite sadness in her, one he hated to see. It was as if she was sure there was no other way, that she was fake, completely engineered by Radcliffe.

"You were right, our programming is different. Are you afraid to die? Because I am."

There it was again, the brokenness. The heartache that proved she was more than a machine, that they were both more than machines. He knew that, so why couldn't she see it too? What was so different between them?

"I know I'm not real, I'm all phantom limbs… but that doesn't make the pain less real."

"You don't have to feel pain." He tried. He wanted to hold her, tell her that she was real, that she was a person. But she wouldn't let him speak long enough to. There was some kind of power she had that stopped him, made him listen to her, hang on to each word as if it would be her last.

"You say you don't anymore. But that pain, that regret, that's what made you a person. A person I love."

He didn't have anything to say anymore. Suddenly it had all evaporated off his tongue.

"My programming was to get the Darkhold. That came from Radcliffe. But my impulse, to keep Coulson safe, and close… that desire… that came from me." She stated.

He nodded. "That's good."

"And I sorry to say…" May finished. "You're not him."

He raised the gun, and she pressed the trigger. Then there was nothing, only the white that followed.

* * *

The Superior approached Aida as she laid down the new addition to the Framework's chain in a locker and closed it. Gazing at the young man, he saw a boy who was trapped in the devil's world. He had stabilised since arriving here.

"You are certain he will not throw your world into chaos?" He questioned.

"I am one hundred percent certain he will hardly have an impact on the Framework. It has revealed his greatest regret, allowing his brother to go racing with him in his uncle's car, which led to the paraplegia of Gabriel Reyes. I have now fixed that regret, and now he can live happily."

Her reply seemed to satisfy him, and he left the room. Aida gazed up at the slumbering young man who was the newest addition to her virtual world.

"Robbie Reyes." She stated. "The man without a soul."


	11. Cut Off One Head

As Piper wrapped her leg after extracting the bullet, Daisy absently twirled a pen in her left hand, her right in a sling. Once the agent was done patching her up, she clenched the writing instrument in a fist and thrust her quake powers into it angrily, shattering it into many shards of plastic, metal and droplets of ink on the deck of the Zephyr.

Jemma looked over, noticing the clear angry and self-loathing on her face. "What is it Daisy?"

"We left Robbie back there to fight those LMDs, and we don't even know if he could've survived that explosion without changing into the Rider."

"I don't know, he seems pretty resilient when it comes to getting blown up. Plus, what's to say he didn't change in time? He's done it pretty fast before hasn't he?" The scientist reasoned from what she knew about the soulless man.

"Yeah, well not this time." The Inhuman woman replied. "He couldn't use the devil's power. I know he's not dead, but he could be buried in the rubble or something."

Shifting in her seat, she dragged the Framework console over, getting to hacking into the network Radcliffe was holding Mace, May, Coulson, Mack, Fitz and who knew else who'd he'd locked away in the network. It took her a long while, but she managed to link the setup they'd taken from the Playground to the apparent virtual prison.

She ran a cross check for anyone from the real world, and she found 8 people plugged in. She knew Mack, Mace, May, Coulson, Fitz and Agnes, Radcliffe's old girlfriend, were in there. That made six, and if she assumed one of the others was Radcliffe himself… that left only one possible person who could've been put in it alongside them to be contained. It was possible, given the time gap between leaving Robbie to face the LMDs and May's duplicate blowing up the base. She latched onto that possibility, it was worth a shot. She breathed.

"Robbie."

Jemma limped over, looking over her shoulder. "What about him?"

"He's alive. One of the LMDs must've got him out of the blast area because, look... " Daisy gestured to the screen, indicating to the eighth occupant of the virtual world. "He's in there, like the others. We have to get them out, it doesn't matter what's keeping them in there."

* * *

Music was booming in the autobody shop, Luis Fonsi's Despacito. Robbie caught the wrench as it came back down to meet his hand after he'd tossed it up, enjoying the Spanish music as he worked on the car. Over the loud reverb of the music in the garage, he heard his name called, so he looked up. Turning it down, he grinned and greeted his visitor.

"Why aren't you in college boy?" He asked jokingly.

Gabe leaned his bike against the wall outside then came in. "College is for people who're aren't interested in anything but cars, who don't pay attention in class, who don't want to think about their long term future. So why aren't you in college?"

Rolling his eyes at his younger brother's cheekiness, he laughed. Grabbing the boy as he came within reach, he headlocked him and ruffled his hair.

"I actually have a job, so that doesn't apply to me."

The younger Reyes broke out the headlock and grinned too. This was the usual dynamic for them. Gabe would finish college, and either Robbie would pick him up or he'd cycle to the shop, it depended on his class schedule. After the older of them was done with work, they'd go home and their uncle would get home from his job as the head of Momentum Labs just in time for dinner. Eli had discovered his employers were knowingly and purposefully endangering lives 5 years ago and had gotten them arrested. He'd then been promoted to the leader of the privately funded think tank and immediately shut down all dangerous experiments.

"Did you see the letter this morning?"

Robbie shook his head. "Been here listening to the music station all day, you know I don't care for HYDRA and their whole 'Inhumans are dangerous' thing."

"Robbie, this is serious." Gabe reinforced his point. "They've put you on the list of Potentials."

"Gabe, we'll be fine. I know I don't have the Inhuman gene, and you don't either. We got tested last year remember? Come on, let me lock up here, then we'll go see tío up at Momentum."

* * *

"So you're going to go into this Framework, find Mack and the others, then pull them out? And it'll work?" Yo-Yo questioned.

Jemma shrugged. "That's about the gist of it. We've got a programmed callback switch, so when we need to get out, we can. Just don't disturb us while we're in there, or you'll probably fry our brains."

"Let's get them back."

Daisy laid back on the gurney, and allowed Piper to put the headset on her. She knew that by going in, she would possibly forfeit her powers, but that was a price she was willing to pay if it got them back. A flash of countless shades of light assaulted her vision, and she found herself falling into the Framework.

It turned out, apparently, that she was literally falling given she found herself splashing into a bath. It wasn't familiar to her, so she scrambled to get out. Finding a towel on the rail attached to the wall opposite, she dried herself off then proceeded to dry her hair too. Her hair, that just so happened to be long and reached the bottom of her shoulder blades. Well crap, this brought back too many memories. She'd cut it after she accepted her Inhuman state of post-terrigenesis. She'd later grown it out after Lincoln's death and dyed it black, which was the colour it was right now in this world.

From what the LMD Mace had told her, the Framework was calibrated to overwrite a person's greatest regret. It had been primed and ready to accept her, and assumedly still was when she'd just entered it, so it would've corrected that, hers probably being the whole debacle with her father. The same with Robbie and the others.

In all likelihood, Robbie probably wasn't even the Ghost Rider here. His greatest regret seemed to be his choices on night of the Fifth Street attack, at least from her perspective.

Wrapping herself in the bathrobe on the wall, she entered the next room, and stopped dead.

Lying in one side of the double bed was Grant Ward. Oh what she wouldn't give to have her powers now, she wanted to quake him and she'd only just got here. She couldn't feel them, so she didn't have them. That might have to change.

What happened next was a blur. She discovered that she went by the name Skye still here, she and Ward apparently dated, and they worked for HYDRA, who'd won the war between them and S.H.I.E.L.D, tracking and imprisoning Inhumans. Going to the Triskellion, she got confirmation that HYDRA had indeed taken over. She had to stop herself from breaking his neck the moment she got the chance, she needed to find the others and get them out.

The instant she was able to slip away, she did. Going to her apparent computer, she searched up those she was looking for. Jemma was apparently dead here, Fitz was restricted access to her, Coulson worked at a school, Mack was a civilian living with his daughter who was dead in the real world, Mace was known as the renegade the Patriot and was an Inhuman with super strength, and May was the Ops Commander of HYDRA.

When she found Robbie in the system, she found herself to be right. He'd never gone out to have a second race with the member of Fifth Street. Here, Gabe was unharmed and he'd never died, and he was pretty much the same as when she'd met him, but minus the Rider part seemingly. Eli wasn't mad either. She noted down the locations for those who had one on her phone, then she was called away.

Meeting May was even more unsettling. She was very similar to when she'd first met the woman, but entirely cold, it wasn't just a front it seemed. The meeting she had to sit through and pretend she knew what they were on about was frightening, but what came next was worse, oh so much worse. She had to interrogate an pre-terrigenesis Inhuman, Vijay Nadeer as it happened. She found herself cursing under her breath as she made her way down to the interrogation room.

If she got the chance, she was at least going to hurt Ward before she left. She knew he wasn't the one who'd become the host of Hive, or been HYDRA all along, but she didn't care, it would make her feel better.

Interrogating Vijay wasn't fun, but she felt she did her performance adequately, but things took a downhill turn when the man was taken to The Doctor, who turned out to be Fitz, the second in command of HYDRA. What absolutely disgusted her was the machine he had that identified a dormant Inhuman's powers without triggering terrigenesis. It consisted of a series of bionically operated needles that seemed to have the effect of burning the insides the subject. A small, selfish part of herself was thankful that she wasn't the one being subjected to that.

When she was dismissed, she located the lab and stole a blood test, but this one was specialised to identify Inhumans. She exited the building the moment she could, ditching Ward and finding a solitary place. Taking the blood test from her pocket, she pricked her thumb with it and waited for the result.

A beep sounded the completion of it, and she checked the small display on the thin, cylindrical device. It showed two words, 'Inhuman Positive'. Well, nice to know some things stayed the same. Now if she could just get some Terrigen, she'd be fully fledged as Quake.

But, orchestrating her second terrigenesis would have to wait. She had to somehow gather the trapped people, who were in various different cities, and get back to Jemma, wherever she was. No time like the present.

She decided to go for the closest one, that being Coulson. He worked at a school in Washington, D.C., the city she was in right now, so finding him wouldn't be that hard, she already knew where he'd be. Stealing a car was easy, and Daisy drove straight to the school that her former boss worked at. Breaking into his car was simple as well, and she sat in the back seat until he got into the vehicle.

"Hey."

He started, turning around and facing her. "Who are you?"

This was why she usually let others make the plans, hers tended to go off the rails straight off the bat. If only she could pull a Robbie and knock everyone out, then force them to leave with her. Actually, that was a much better plan than the one she'd come in with. She might actually do that after this.

"This is not okay!" Coulson told her firmly. He definitely did not recognise her then. Great.

Nursing her head, she decided to wing it on this one.

"Okay, this is going to sound crazy but your brain has been messed with, your memories were replaced with fake ones and this is a virtual world which is also a prison. Following so far?"

He shook his head. "You lost me."

"Okay, a little slower then. We know each other, you're basically my strict rockstar dad who's a secret agent. A guy called Radcliffe created this virtual world which is pretty much a 'what if' place, then stuck you in it. Your memories have been replaced, that's why you don't remember me." Still nothing, he shook his head. "You have a mechanical hand. You ran S.H.I.E.L.D. You keep mentioning a bottle of Haig when you talk to May. Dammit Coulson, work with me!"

She hit the passenger seat's back with a fist, thoroughly ticked off at Radcliffe and Aida, who'd built this place. Then she heard her name.

"Skye?"

Looking up, she saw a slight look of recognition on the man's face. He remembered her!

"Yep, that's me. You remember anything else?" She asked.

"Not really, isn't your hair supposed to be brown, not black?"

Noticing her long, black hair again, she sighed. She really kept forgetting this wasn't the body she was used to. Her real one was more fragile, her bones were brittler, her hair was shorter and she was usually injured in some way. Also, she usually had some kind of drug in her system, either being rapid bone healing pills or painkillers. "Dyed hair wasn't my first concern."

Avoiding HYDRA was a little difficult when they came for Coulson, but she managed to get him safe. Taking him back to the apartment this world's version of her lived in, she found Jemma there.

"How was being dead?"

The brunette shuddered. "I had to dig my way out of a mass grave at the fallen academy."

The door clicked opened and they turned to find Ward there. He looked genuinely surprised to see the three of them there. He closed the door and came up to her.

"Skye, where've you been? And who are these people?"

Daisy crossed to the room, standing in front of him, forcing herself to go along with him taking her in his arms. He focused on her face, and she got ready secretly as he held her.

"Ward, I've got something to tell you."

He looked confused. "Skye, are you pregnant?"

Surprised, and for some reason embarrassed by the question, she shook her head emphatically. "No, no, its nothing like that."

She whipped her elbow up, striking him in the face and knocking him out in one clean strike, just like May had taught her, and she crouched down on the carpeted floor next to him as he lost consciousness.

"It's just my name isn't Skye, it's Daisy Johnson." She told him before he blacked out.

Why his immediate assumption had been that she was pregnant was disturbing, no doubt about that. This world's Skye was clearly different to her, prior and post Hive and Jiaying, and she'd barely made it through the first day. If this kept up, she would eventually draw attention to her presence.

"What was that?" Jemma asked. "And why was he here?"

Taking off his tie, Daisy tied him to a chair with it as her friend asked the questions. Then, she replied. "Oh, nothing much. I might've accidentally knocked out my boyfriend in this world."

Looking over at the other woman, she noted the disbelieving look that was being sent her way and shrugged.

"I was, and apparently still am in this world, a naive little girl."

Coulson raised his eyebrows. "Do we know him, in the other world?"

"Much more than any of us would like to." Jemma replied. "You actually killed him with your robotic hand on another planet."

"Oh. That's cool I guess."

Stealing Ward's gun, Daisy tucked it into her waistband and let her top fall over it. Removing anything else from the man whose real world version she hated so much that could potentially be used to escape, she did a pat down search on him just for safety, even though she'd seen him get dressed this morning. That done, she relaxed a little.

"It's a pain in the ass to get people to even remember one thing about the real world, so I say we just knock the rest out and find the exit given ours doesn't work." She stated.

"That could work, but we'd be lugging around 5 people, and we'd have to keep knocking them out."

Jemma did have a point.

"At this point, I really don't care. I'm going to go to the Triskelion tomorrow to see if I can get some form of Terrigen to trigger my terrigenesis and find out where the Radcliffe needle is in this haystack of a place."


	12. Who Are You?

Daisy was leant against the wall when Ward woke up from being knocked out. He looked thoroughly confused. The moment he was alert enough, she went full Quake mode, locking down all emotion. She didn't have her powers to complete the persona, but it would be enough to interrogate him.

"Skye? What's going on?"

She ignored his question. "Where do HYDRA keep Terrigen?"

"Skye…"

She pulled his gun out and aimed it at his head. "Answer the question or I'll start putting bullets in the most painful non-fatal points."

"I don't know, only those directly under the Doctor know where it's stored." He answered, a sad and hurt expression on his face. "Come on Skye, what're you doing? Where'd this side of you come from?"

The last question caused a flash to cloud her vision, and for a moment she saw a fiery incarnation of a skeleton roaring in an absolute darkness. The Spirit of Vengeance, there was no doubt that was a form it could take. This 'side' of her came from Jiaying and Hive mostly, but after being briefly possessed by 'the other guy', it had gotten stronger. After a pause, she asked her next question.

"Where is Holden Radcliffe?"

"I've no idea who he is."

In the corner of her sight, she saw Jemma motion to her. She got up, swapping with the woman as she pointed to Coulson. "What is is?"

"I've heard the name Radcliffe before, he was a scientist who was in the paper for working on a 'cure' for Inhumans." He pulled out a newspaper clipping from a file and showed it to her. "It isn't really much, but it's a start right?"

"Oh yeah it is. Thanks Coulson, this gives us somewhere to start." She thanked him, with a smile playing across her face.

Going back into the room where they'd put Ward, she went to knock him out but he spoke first.

"Why are you doing this?"

Lowering her arm, Daisy stepped back, glancing to check Jemma was gone. Her friend out of the room, she spoke honestly, dropping the Quake persona. "I'm not Skye, and I don't belong in this world. I need to go home, but I'm not leaving without the people I came here for."

"If you're not Skye… then why are you in her body?" He asked.

"I used to call myself Skye in my world, but my birth name is Daisy, and I started using it after my dad killed my mom to protect me. Radcliffe trapped my friends in here, and tried to do the same to me and Jemma, but we escaped because I'm an Inhuman with powers in that place. We used our own version of the device Radcliffe trapped our friends in here with, which put our minds in the bodies of our counterparts. Now we have to get the ones trapped in here and find the portal that'll send our minds back to our own world."

"When you leave, will she come back?"

Forcing herself to look him in the eyes, she sighed. "I don't know. I don't know a lot of things, the first of which why I'm even talking to you right now."

"Did my counterpart do something to you?"

The question hit her hard. He had to be every bit as perceptive as the Ward she knew, or this world's Skye was still similar to her.

"He lied to me, killed more people than I could count, betrayed pretty much everyone, tortured people, and he justified it all as a result of his family's abuse and loving me. Then Coulson killed him, and he became the host of the first Inhuman. His body was blown up in space."

"So the worst possible version of me then?"

She nodded. He hung his head, clearly saddened and ashamed of his dead self in the real world. His voice was ridden with regret and sorrow when he next spoke.

"I'm sorry, for everything I did to you in your world. I don't think I can imagine how painful it is for you to have to see my face and all that it brings you is pain." He looked up. "But, here, in this world, maybe I can try to make amends for what I've done in your world. Anything you need to get home, I'll do my best, if you'll let me."

* * *

Old, weary eyes opened as the sound of a thousand roars came from within. The old man sat up, shaking his shoulder long, silver grey hair out of his face as his feet touched the wooden floor of his room.

Pulling on his boots and coat, he made his way outside the chapel and into the cemetery as a motorcycle pulled up and its rider dismounted. The arrival was a considerably younger man who had a chain wrapped around his chest, an 1887 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun across his back, a pair of Colt Commander pistols, one holstered on each thigh, an Ontario Spec Plus Marine Combat Knife sheathed on each shin and a Colt Diamondback handgun in a third holster on the back of his belt. He was dressed for war, black leather jacket, gloves and pants, and the sturdiest boots he'd ever seen on a biker.

"Grab what you need old man, it's time for you to answer the call you've been ignoring for 150 years." The man, who looked rugged and unkempt, told him.

"So… the kid isn't ready?"

"He isn't good enough, not for this calling." Came the rebuttal he'd been expecting. "He's being targeted by Zarathos because he can't fight back. He's weak and endangers both you and I with his weakness."

The old man sat down on the low wall of the chapel's cemetery, then spoke.

"It's true, he's especially vulnerable to the Archangel, but that's not on him, that's on you. He's your protege, you turned him, he's your responsibility. You put the Spirit of Vengeance in him, barely explained what he'd become to him, then left him all alone. I taught you all I could, you've taught him nothing, you've given him nothing."

"What would you have had me do, waste my time trying to teach him to fend off his antithesis instead of me defending this world from Blackheart, Pluto and the rest?"

He looked up. "I'm not saying you haven't been giving your all, going above and beyond to protect this world, but you could've at least directed him to me."

He stood up, approaching his geared up successor.

"Go back to the warfront, it's where you belong. You got the determination of a bullet, and the heart of the soldier who fires it, so use them. I'll fix your mistake, but this is the one time I do, you understand?"

The younger man nodded, then got back on his bike. The older one whistled, and out of the fog came a horse with a shotgun in a holster attached to the right side of the saddle, a coiled chain attached to the left. The elderly man mounted the strong stallion and retrieved his cowboy style hat, placing it securely on his head.

Then, the pair changed, their modes of transport with them. Their flesh burned off, revealing their skeletons that raged with the fire of the devil. They rode in separate directions, horse and bike leaving trails of fire.

* * *

"Is your name Roberto Reyes?" The HYDRA interviewer asked him as he sat in the chair in the interrogation room of their LA facility. He was strapped into a lie detector chair.

He answered calmly, staring straight at the camera as he'd been instructed. "Yes."

"List your immediate family."

"One younger brother, both parents deceased, single uncle." He replied monotonously.

"Are you a Potential Inhuman?"

"No, my brother and I were tested last year."

"Have you ever demonstrated any abilities that would classify you as enhanced?"

"No."

"I'm going to ask you a follow up. Has anyone you personally know demonstrated enhanced abilities?"

"No."

The interrogator studied the results briefly. "You will be held in custody until these results have been properly studied, then you will either be released or detained for transport to the Triskelion."

The man left the room, and he was alone, free to get out of the chair. So, he did, stretching his legs. He'd been collected from his house this morning by a HYDRA dispatch that dealt with inquiries and the detection of Potentials, which he'd been put on the list of for some reason or other. Gabe and his uncle had been worried, but they let him go without a fuss.

After a couple hours, he was visited by someone else. They opened the door, a pair of guards behind them, and motioned for him to follow them.

"There are a pair of HYDRA agents here to see you, and they asked by name."

He was taken to an interview room instead of the interrogation one he was in right now, and the door was shut after he was shoved in. As said, there were two HYDRA agents, in casual attire, one male and one female. The male one spoke first.

"Are you Robbie Reyes?"

"Yeah, that's me." He acknowledged. "I'm not in any trouble am I?"

"No, my partner Skye just has an investigation you're connected to. I'm Grant Ward by the way."

The woman apparently called Skye drew up a chair and gestured kindly to the one on the opposite side of the table. She looked barely his age, maybe give or take a year or two. "You can sit down if you want, it's up to you."

Cautious of this kind attitude which was non-existent in HYDRA personnel, Robbie took a seat opposite her.

"You can relax, this isn't anything severe." 'Skye' told him. "Let's start easy. Do you recognise any of these people?"

She put a series of pictures on the table. He looked at them in turn, but none of them were really familiar to him, he didn't know any of them. The people consisted of one Chinese woman, two white British, one male, one female, a serious looking man, another who looked more casual, and a bald and bearded dark skinned man.

"Sorry, I don't. I can't say I've seen any of them before."

She put them away, then continued.

"Have you ever been street racing?"

He shrugged. "A couple times, only big one I ever did I won a grand off of a guy. He wanted another race after that, good fun and all."

'Did you go back for another race with him?" She inquired.

"Yeah, but my car got smashed by a truck on the way there, I got pretty badly hurt and stuck on crutches for months. That's when I gave it up."

"Sounds painful, I've been in a similar situation to that recently." She commented. "Have you ever been threatened, harassed or attacked by the Fifth Street Locos gang?"

"No, but the guy I won a grand off had ties with them." He replied.

"Any experience with car crashes or near death accidents?"

"Not other than the truck that put me on crunches."

"Ever been to Southridge Penitentiary?"

"Never."

"Any dangerous encounters with fire?"

"Nothing worse than dealing with an engine fire at work."

"What car do you own?"

"I share a 1969 Dodge Charger with my uncle."

"Any relationships you've been in?"

"Never had a girlfriend."

"Have you been to LA Exchange at any point?"

"No."

"Do you remember a short brown haired Asian girl, looks very similar to me, has a thing for black, passively suicidal, doesn't get along with her surrogate parents and goes by the name Daisy Johnson?"

"No!" He protested. This was getting really unnerving, and kind of ridiculous. "I have no idea what you're on about, now can I go? Who are you anyway?"

She nodded, and he stormed out of the room, going back to the one he'd previously been in, escorted by the guards again.

* * *

Daisy just sat there for a while, not even the slightest clue how to process that. He didn't remember a thing about her or the real world, no matter how many memory hooks she tried to use to get him to recall something, anything. He seemed to not even have the slightest clue about his real life, the Fifth Street attack, the deal with the devil, Gabe being paralyzed, or anything since the night he'd snuck out with the car he'd later inherit from his insane uncle. Unlike Coulson, he couldn't even get a fragment back.

For some reason, it hurt more than she thought it should. It was like a knife had been thrust into her heart, and violently twisted around without a care. She didn't even fight Ward leading her out of the facility, in fact she didn't even realise he had until she was next the car with him, hearing him call her old name.

"Skye!"

She looked up slowly, as if totally drained. He was holding her by the shoulders, gently but firmly, shaking her a little. He looked far more worried than she'd ever seen him.

"What was that whole deal about?" He inquired. "You're more shaken than even the time you nearly got killed."

"He doesn't remember."

That was all she said, and all she had to. Ward knew enough to guess the rest, and he apparently guessed it right. He pulled her against his chest in a hug, triggering a reflex she hadn't used in almost a year. She called it her anti-Ward reflex, because he was the reason she had developed it over the course of two years.

Her elbow came swinging at his face, but this time he caught it and spun her around, locking his arms around her from behind and keeping his head clear of a potential headbutt.

"Shhhh. It's going to be okay." He whispered, gentle as a summer breeze.

The Ward she knew was almost identical to this one, just more demented. He'd shushed her just like this when she'd found out he was HYDRA, defeating her and doing exactly this aboard the Bus after Deathlok had helped him kidnap her. He'd dragged her kicking and screaming to the common room of the plane Garrett had commandeered and pulled her down with him to the couch, doing this exact thing until she fell asleep from exhaustion of screaming at him and writhing in his arms.

Then she heard his voice again.

"He'll remember, you just need to find the right to thing to help him."

He picked her up and opened the back door of the car, putting her on the back seats. A sad, dry and dead laugh came from her as she buried her face in his chest, his arms around her.

"I can't believe I'm getting comforted by the first guy to break my heart."


	13. Waking

_With a roar that portrayed pure rage to him, Robbie watched as a skeleton wreathed in furious fire disintegrated living people with a flaming, bladed link chain. It was his height, and wearing a black leather jacket with white lines drawing a rectangle outline that cut off at the hem of the jacket and white cuffs, knuckle exposing gloves, grey jeans and dark Vans on its feet. Cracks in its skull exuded a fiery glow identical to that of the glowing eyes in the hollow sockets._

 _Then, from nowhere, a hook-ended chain lashed around its arms and torso, binding it inescapably by hooking onto itself after several loops._

 _It came from the sleeve of a similar being, a pure white skeleton that burned with angelic blue fire and was clad in full black leather. From its other sleeve came another, identical chain that was swung and wrapped itself around the first skeleton's leg. Both chains set ablaze with the same fire as the second skeleton, and the blue inflamed skeleton hissed,_

" _Time to go,_ _ **Ghost Rider.**_ "

 _When the chains caught fire, Robbie felt the burn around his chest and leg, identically to the 'Ghost Rider', felt the blood dripping from the wounds they caused. Then, he woke._

The mechanic shot up in his bed in a cold sweat, and the pain vanished. Finding it a bit of a struggle to breath, he quietly rushed to the bathroom and splashed his face with water. He remained propping himself up on the sink for a while, then looked up.

However, his wasn't the reflection he saw.

He saw the first burning skeleton, the Ghost Rider, glaring back at him fiercely. From inside his head he heard the sound of a thousand echoes of a demonic voice, roaring two deafening words at him.

 _ **WAKE UP!**_

* * *

Closing the door after her, Daisy looked up to see Jemma and Coulson. "It was a bust, Robbie doesn't have any clue this world isn't ours."

"Well, it looks like our only option for him really _is_ to knock him over the head and drag him back." Jemma sighed, pacing the floor of the apartment. "You'd think he'd be the easiest to make remember our world, you know, being possessed by a demon and all."

"Well he isn't, not here. Ghost Rider doesn't exist here."

Coulson looked confused as anything. "Wait, are you saying this Robbie guy is possessed by a demon in the real world?"

"It's more of a revenge spirit." The black haired Inhuman woman explained tiredly.

"And we need him to come back because…"

"He's the only one who's immune to the effects of the Darkhold, which is an evil book of all knowledge, and makes him the only person who can keep it out reach of anyone it could corrupt." Jemma explained _**very**_ briefly.

"Well, that and he happens to be Daisy's vigilante partner in crime, quite literally."

Daisy's phone rang at that point, and she answered it when she saw it was Ward, who spoke immediately. " _I managed to get you a face to face with the Patriot, although he's sketchy about all this._ "

"Thanks Ward. You have any luck with rounding up the rest of my world's strays yet?"

" _I got you a meeting with one of them so be expecting contact in a bit, and did one better. Managed to use that Trojan you gave me to get you coordinates of this Radcliffe guy's location and made sure there's no forensic giveaways on the drive. If they find it, they won't be able to tell who planted it._ "

"Okay, keep covering for me if you can."

" _Will do, see you later. Oh, and you'll want to be more careful than you were with that LA guy Skye._ "

The line cut off, and she muttered under her breath. " _It's Daisy, why can nobody get that right?_ "

A ringtone from her phone caught her attention. It was a call, from a contact with the designated name 'Mom'. Was it Jiaying, or someone else? She really hoped it wasn't Jiaying, she couldn't take hearing her voice again, it already haunted her nightmares and echoed in her head whenever she was alone.

With deep breath, she took the call and held the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

" _Hello Skye._ " May's voice emanated from the speaker and into her ear, and shock fell over her features, plain for Coulson and Jemma to see.

* * *

Madame Hydra put the mission report down and nodded at her with a definite appreciative intent clear behind it. "Excellent work Agent May, your work has exceeded my expectations once again."

"It's a pleasure to serve Ma'am." She replied with an inclination of her head, hands clasped behind her back in the well known 'at-ease' position.

"And exemplary service such as yours is rewarded."

May didn't answer, staying silent. The Director of HYDRA walked around her desk, standing directly beside the Chinese woman, who turned 90° to face her. There was barely a metre between them now.

"How's your daughter, Skye?"

"She seems stressed lately, but driven and committed to her work. She and Agent Ward had a fight recently, something about him wanting to take it slower, but she's always been an all or nothing person. However, I am concerned about her health, she keeps pushing herself too far and takes every assignment up for grabs even when it's not her shift."

The taller woman went back behind her desk as the Doctor came in. "She's seems to get that from you. You may go."

With another small inclination of her head, May turned and left the office. Striding through the offices and corridors, she was unopposed until she was spotted by Ward, passing through his block.

"Uh May? Could I borrow a minute of your time?"

"Make it quick." She replied, allowing him to get up from his seat and fall in step beside her.

"Knowing how on top of things you are, you've heard that Skye and I had a bit of a disagreement a couple of days ago. I don't think she wants to talk to me about it right now so I was wondering if you could spare a night to have a sit down with her and give her someone to talk to. Not that I'm trying to go behind her back or anything, but..."

She glanced over at him for a moment. "Basically you're asking if I'd listen to her relationship problems because you don't understand the mind of a woman?"

"When you put it like that, it seems kind of weird for me to ask. I guess I'll figure it out."

The child Katya had gone insane and caused the Cambridge Incident because she didn't have proper mother, she'd jump out of a Quinjet without a parachute before her own turned out like that, adopted or not.

"Stay in your lane Agent Ward, I'll talk to Skye."

He turned back around and went back to his cubicle presumably, leaving her walking through the Triskelion on her own. Entering the lift alone, she got out her phone and slowly went through the process of locating Skye's phone number. It wasn't hard, the young woman was the first on her speed dial, had been since her ex-husband Andrew had been revealed to be the savage Inhuman killer known as Lash.

That was the last blow that separated the pair of them, but she'd protected her adoptive daughter despite what was thought of Inhumans and Potentials. She was the one who altered Skye's blood test results, and kept the secret of the 20 year old girl being a Potential for the last 9 years.

Letting the memories of her deceptions for the sake of her estranged adoptive daughter subside, she tapped the contact photo on the screen. It was the last picture she had of the now young woman, right before Andrew had been taken away.

The line opened on the other end, after a few seconds, and she heard Skye's voice across the call. " _Hello?_ "

"Hello Skye." She found herself saying. "I think it's time we stop avoiding each other."

" _I don't… I'm not following._ "

"You, me, dinner tonight. Sound okay to you?"

" _Yeah, sure that'd be good. What kind of dinner were you thinking? Eat out, takeaway, formal, semi-formal, what time…_ "

A small hint of something graced her features for a literal second. "You're overthinking it Skye, casual at 9, the house if you don't mind being back there. I'll cook so don't bring anything."

" _Okay, see you then._ "

She ended the call and put her phone away in her pocket. That should sort both Ward and Skye.

* * *

The moment May ended the call, Daisy cycled back through her contacts and called Ward. He picked up on the first few rings. " _What's up?_ "

"You could have told me May was my mom, or that I had one."

" _Sorry, I figured she'd adopted you in your world too. You were four when she got you out of the foster care system, still called Mary Sue Poots at the time, and you lived with her until we got our apartment a year or two ago._ "

For some reason, she was suddenly hit with a memory that wasn't from her life, yet it was hers.

" _Poots." The voice rang out up the stairs. "You have visitors."_

 _Mary Sue sat down on her bed, still unhappy about being called the ridiculous name they'd given her, and the door opened to her pretty much bare room. She found the head nun there, with a tall dark skinned man and an Asian woman. There was something different about these people, she didn't know why though._

 _The nun left, and the tall man gestured to the door. "Would you like me to close it?"_

 _She nodded without a word, and he closed the door. The woman dropped down to a crouch about a metre away in front of her. She seemed nice, there was a warmth that seemed to simply radiate off of her, a certain kindness in her eyes._

" _Hi honey, you want to get out of here? From what I hear, this place isn't any fun." The nice woman had the same warmth in her voice._

 _Mary nodded, a smile edging its way onto her face. Both adults smiled back at her, and unlike all the faces before, these smiles were_ true _, not the fake ones the others had all put on whenever they pretended to be nice to her. These people weren't pretending, as she found out when they brought out adoption papers after breakfast one day. They even let her get rid of the horrible name she had._

" _Skye? That's a unique name, and it belongs to a unique little girl." Andrew expressed with approval. "Now you just need a middle name? Maybe something Chinese, your grandma would love that."_

" _How about… Xiuying?" Melinda suggested._

" _What that mean?" Skye asked curiously._

 _Her mother corrected her with a smile. "What_ does _that mean, grammar honey. Xiù means 'beautiful', 'elegant' or 'outstanding', and yīng means 'flower', 'petal', 'brave', or 'hero'."_

" _Don't nitpick her grammar just yet Melinda, she's four." Andrew told her mom with a bit of a telling-off voice._

" _All the better to start now, my mother would throw a fit if she heard her granddaughter speaking without her grammar right." Melinda returned cheerfully. "Besides, she already going to insist on her speaking Mandarin."_

Shaking off the Framework memory, she asked her other question. "Where did Skye live before she moved in you?"

* * *

Robbie was bored. And when he was bored, he started what his _tío_ called 'deep thinking'. The deep thoughts today, his day off work, were of the nightmare and apparent hallucination he'd had at about five in the morning. It had been most of a day since he'd been unable to go back to sleep, and it had haunted him all day.

What was worse was the fact his reflection had now become that demonic spirit, the Ghost Rider. It didn't matter what surface he looked in, it was always there, a haunting visage that stalked him. It always had that furious look in its glowing orange eyes, and even though he knew it wasn't there, he could feel the vengeful aura it radiated, the hate it exuded so potently, like it wanted to kill almost everyone he came across. And it all came from inside him, which was the worrying part.

 _Crashing through the car window, he was flung into the air, and he knew; he'd screwed up more than he ever had. Because of him, Gabe was going to die, they both were._

' _Please God, universe, anyone out there…' He flew a distance and finished his prayer._

' _This is my fault, so please… spare Gabe, and take me instead!'_

 _Then he hit the street, and fell into the black. There was nothing but nothingness itself, and it was the coldest, loneliest place he'd ever been, not even his parents' funeral was this lonely, this despairing. Then he heard a silky, poisonous voice._

" _ **Do you want a second chance? Do you want to punish those who hurt your brother, to see them**_ **suffer** _ **? Do you want to avenge your death?**_ "

 _No doubt, he did want all of that, more than anything. His obvious answer was 'Yes'._

 _With a rapid intake of air into his lungs, he returned to his body. His heart was weakly beating again, and it was resuming its usual beat. But he was more focused of the devil that was standing over him, grasping the back of his bloody head. The glowing orange eyes bore into his as he felt a demonic fragment enter his body, and he lost consciousness to the fledgling revenge spirit that now lived in him._

The horrifying memory flash ended, and an infernal agony struck his right hand. Holding it up in front of his face, Robbie screamed, clutching his wrist as the skin, flesh, muscle and blood of his hand burned away, disintegrating before his eyes. The agony dulled, but remained at his wrist, where his flesh began.

By some ungodly power, his revealed finger bones moved, curling up and uncurling as he consciously moved them. But, he couldn't feel a thing from it, not even the fire that licked from it.

" _What the_ _ **hell**_ _have I become?!_ " He gasped.

Gabe would be expecting him to drive up and pick him up any time now, even though he'd had a long day at college. Eli would call him not soon after, and he'd have to swing by Momentum to pick him up as well, as per the agreement for them sharing the car. He desperately needed to fix his hand, or at least hide it by that time. Holding his skeletal hand aloft so that he didn't brush it against anything in his panic, he scrabbled through his drawers, searching for anything that would work.

After turning out half of them with his left hand, he found a pair of black leather driving gloves that covered his whole hands. Pulling them on, he grabbed his pure black leather jacket and pulled it on. The sleeves reached the backs of his thumbs so he was good now. Leather couldn't catch fire either.

Leaving his room in its present state, he grabbed his keys and got in the car, hoping to God that neither Gabe nor his uncle would notice his skeleton hand.

* * *

Nervously stepping up to the door, Daisy knocked. A moment later, she heard May's voice from what she assumed was the kitchen. " _Come in, it's unlocked._ "

Opening the door, she entered the house she'd never been in personally, but she apparently lived in until a year or two ago. Well, the Framework version of her anyway. Carefully, she closed the door and made her way through to the kitchen. May had already set out the table and cooked everything. Apparently she was better at cooking here.

Then the first subject of Aida's Framework came in from the next room, wearing casual clothes unlike how she'd seen her recently. Moment of truth.

"Hi Mom."


End file.
